What's happening today in Gaza is morally, politically, and legally intolerable.

And we absolutely need an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an immediate and unconditional release of hostages, and total openness in relation to humanitarian aid.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer and this week world leaders meet in Midtown Manhattan for the 80th, that's right 80th Annual United Nations General Assembly.

They meet at a time when the world is embroiled in conflict and crisis from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan.

And they meet at a moment when the Trump administration has made its disdain for multilateralism clear, not just through words, but also action, slashing billions of dollars of congressionally approved foreign aid.

To put it simply, the United Nations is in rough waters and no one knows this better than the man at the helm, Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

He has acknowledged this organization must learn to quote "do less with less" but can it cut costs before it goes the way of the League of Nations?

I'll ask the man himself.

Don't worry I've also got your puppet regime.

Xi Jinping, Vladimir and Narendra.

Thank you for this meeting where we demonstrate again our unity against American threats.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor Prologis.

Every day all over the world Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologist.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, health care, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And... No one likes getting older.

As the United Nations turns 80, those signs of age are clear.

Eight decades after representatives from 51 member states signed a charter to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," conflict rages on in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan.

Humanitarian crises have ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, and Yemen.

Globally, 123 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes.

I could go on.

And while the United Nations is quick to condemn and condemn and condemn these injustices, the truth is that persistent deadlock and dysfunction have stifled meaningful action, our GZERO world.

At the same time, a long-simmering problem is now boiling over.

The United Nations is running out of cash.

As the United Nations marks 80 years since its foundation, any celebrations may be overshadowed by a funding crisis that some say is amongst the worst it's ever faced.

The United Nations has called its financial strain undeniable, warning that budget shortfalls are hitting its life-saving aid programs hardest.

At risk?

Efforts ranging from HIV/AIDS initiatives in Tajikistan to protections for women and girls in crisis zones like the DRC, Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan.

So why is this happening now?

Well, for one thing, the organization cannot borrow money.

There's no deficit spending.

Can you even imagine that?

Because the United Nations is not a sovereign government.

It has no capital base, has no assets, has no power to tax.

It is entirely dependent on the contributions of its member states.

And since January 20th, 2025, its most important member state has made it a priority to cut those contributions.

Elon Musk may have parted ways with the White House, but U.S.

President Trump's mission to cut billions in foreign aid is still well underway.

A dramatic move by President Trump tonight.

He's trying to single-handedly block nearly $5 billion in foreign aid already approved by Congress.

It would be unfair, though, to say the United States is solely responsible for the UN's financial woes.

In 2024, 41 countries owed 760 million in unpaid mandatory dues.

In China, which accounts for 20% of the UN's annual budget, has also become flaky in when it actually makes its contributions.

Last year, it was the second to last country to pay its dues.

And in last place, North Korea.

The UN's leadership is sounding the alarm.

In March, Secretary General Guterres launched a major cost-cutting initiative to coincide with the UN's 80th birthday, called UN80.

Proposals included cutting staff, consolidating the organization's many agencies into four streamlined branches, and moving offices from pricey New York and Geneva to cheaper cities like Nairobi.

But will it be enough?

And can the United Nations continue to function in a world where so many of the most important members are questioning its value?

I sit down with the United Nations Secretary General himself to ask precisely that question.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres, it's really nice to be with you.

It's an enormous pleasure to be with you again.

Let me ask you a little bit about some of the conflicts around the world.

The UN, of course, is making news because of a study under UN auspices that announced that a genocide is being conducted by Israel on the ground in Gaza.

It's quite a staggering statement.

I want to give you a chance to respond to that as Secretary General.

Well, I don't respond to that as a position of an independent organisation.

I have no competence to declare or not genocide.

This is something that belongs to judicial institutions.

And obviously I can only follow the orientations that I get from the Security Council or the General Assembly.

The problem is not the name, the problem is the reality.

And the reality is absolutely horrendous in Gaza today.

After the horrific attacks of Hamas that we strongly condemned, we have a response that is with the higher level of death and destruction that I have ever seen in my public life, with severe obstructions, at a certain moment total obstruction of humanitarian aid, leading together with all these aspects to famine and to levels of suffering, lack of all kinds of health care, adequate water, adequate sanitation, adequate shelter, to a population that is forced to move all the time and is suffering in a way that is absolutely unimaginable.

So I have no doubt to say that what's happening today in Gaza is morally, politically and legally intolerable.

And we absolutely need an immediate permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an immediate and unconditional release of hostages and total openness in relation to humanitarian aid.

Now, as we need the respect of international law in the West Bank with the hand of this construction of settlements that are illegal and international law, we need to avoid the annexation that would make the two-state solution much more difficult to implement.

and we need to recognize that the only way to have peace in the Middle East and the only way to avoid radicalization around the world is indeed to stop the war in Gaza and to move into a two-state solution.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Israel is going to have to learn to live with greater isolation, which is exactly the opposite of what the United Nations, of course, was founded to be.

He has the possibility to solve that problem, understanding the need to change course and understanding the need to, with full need to recognize the right of Israel to exist and the right of Israel to exist in security.

And this for me is clear, but fully recognizing recognizing also that another people is in the same land and that other people also need to have a state and live also in security.

Russia-Ukraine, a war that's been going on for now, coming up on four years.

Lots of pressure internationally on Russia too, to engage in a ceasefire, to at least talk with President Zelensky.

Putin has shown no interest in that.

We've only seen more strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine.

Is there still any possibility of engaging in behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Russians and Ukrainians in a useful way?

I think there are lots of behind-the-scenes contacts and there are public contacts by different sources and the United States has been very active in trying to find a way.

The truth is that I believe the two positions are now in very with a huge distance between them.

Ukraine is legitimately concerned in relation to the preservation of its territorial integrity according to international law.

And Russia is clearly determined to have a large occupation of territories that belong to Ukraine.

And not willing to have a ceasefire even to create the conditions for a serious negotiation between the two sides.

So I'm not optimistic in the short term about a breakthrough in relation to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

And the suffering, again, of the Ukrainian people is terrible.

But also the suffering of the Russian people starts to be significant with the economic difficulties the country faces.

Not to mention the number of soldiers that were killed.

Yeah, it looks like over a million casualties that the Russians have experienced over the last three and a half years and not slowing them down in the slightest.

It is the fact, but I believe that this is something in which there is only one way that is fair and that way is the respect of the Charter, of international law and of the resolutions of the General Assembly of the United Nations that are clear about the right of territorial integrity.

The question of territorial integrity is for me a very important question.

Because if you look at the world, you have several countries, even in Europe, where you have minorities of one neighboring country, the same ethnic group of one neighboring country within the country.

And we see some of these situations rather complicated.

I mean, look at Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Kosovo.

On the other hand, all the African borders were designed by the colonial powers, and they are, many of them, entirely artificial.

And the heads of state in Africa had the wisdom to say, "Let's not touch these borders, because if not, it will be chaos."

So, the day territory integrity is considered to be expendable, we can have an explosion of conflicts in the world.

That is why we are so keen in affirming that territory integrity is a major question when we look at the Russia-Ukraine war.

You've been almost a decade now here at the United Nations.

The world has changed a lot.

At the macro level, would you say that the world is increasingly becoming multipolar now?

We are moving in that direction, but we are not yet there.

For the moment, I think we are in a kind of chaotic transition.

But it is obvious that if you look at the weight of the G7 in the global economy, every single day it diminishes a little bit.

And if you look at the emerging economies, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam, every single day they represent a bigger share of the global economy.

The problem is that the institutions we have are still based on what the world was after the Second World War.

And so we need to review those institutions to take into account the reality of today's world.

Now, we've been talking about the rise of the rest in the global South for decades now, so this isn't a surprise.

And usually when that happens and the architecture doesn't change, it's the new countries that are becoming more powerful.

They're the ones that want the reform, and yet it's the most powerful country, the United States, that seems to be least interested in the institution.

I think that developed countries, let's say the G7, have two alternatives.

One is to lead the reform, because they are still the most powerful group of countries, and they are still the largest share of the global economy.

So if they lead the reform today, they will have more functional institutions, but they will still have a dominant role in those institutions.

If they don't lead the reform today, the evolution is, as I mentioned, with the larger growth of the emerging economies, and the much smaller growth of the developed countries' economies, at a certain moment they will suffer the reforms.

And that is something that they should be wise enough to anticipate.

This is the moment for G7 countries to lead the reform of global institutions.

Now, today, as the big powers are divided, and they are in themselves a source of instability in their relationship, what happens is that everybody everywhere thinks that they can do whatever they want.

And you have mid-sized powers that today have much more influence than the big ones.

And they feel that the impunity is total.

I mean, look at what's happening in Sudan.

In Sudan you have, of course, the two armies facing each other, or the army and the rebels, facing each other with a cruelty that is absolutely intolerable.

But you have a number of countries that are arming them, that are supporting them, and that are making it very difficult for a true peace to be established.

And the countries that are arming them are middle countries.

It's not the US.

It's not China.

And there are no instruments to make them feel that they pay a price if they go on behaving like that.

And that is what we need.

We need the capacity of the international system to have some carrots and some sticks in order to be able that those that violate international law, those that violate the Charter of the United Nations, those that violate the most basic human rights have something to lose.

Now, we saw recently in China, and you were there, the Chinese government was hosting a lot of leaders around the world and they were talking, talking about a rules-based order.

They were saying, we don't want a law of the jungle.

They usually are the last to pay their dues at the United Nations.

They're spending money a little earlier this time around.

Are they, do they see an opportunity?

Is China potentially winning in a more chaotic environment?

Now, first, you do not have an organized bloc to oppose a G7 domination.

You have all these countries that were there, have their own divisions, and they have their own problems.

But they are united in saying that the present state of international relations is unfair, and that they should play a bigger role.

That unites them.

In my opinion, China, if you look at the text of the new proposal on global governance, it talks about the UN, it talks about multilateralism, it talks about people-centered development.

I don't think China wants to build a parallel system.

I think China wants to have its fair share in the present system.

And I think the same applies to many of the emerging economies of today.

And that is the reason why I've been saying, I mean, this is the moment for these seven countries to assume the leadership of the reforms that are necessary to adapt our institutions to the world of today.

Because if they don't, there are other countries that will play a bigger role.

And the logic is clear.

I mean, emerging economies are growing much faster than traditional developed countries.

And as I mentioned, the Chinese are now... And the Chinese are the biggest of those emerging economies.

But we should not forget India.

We should not forget Indonesia.

You should not forget Brazil.

So there is a new constellation of powers in the world that are not united entirely, but that clearly are not satisfied with the present global governance structures and would like to have their fair share.

So for now, at a time of chaos, the time of an absence of a global order of governance, the United Nations is under a lot of financial pressure.

You're going to have to make announcements to reduce staffing.

But those are two different things.

>> Yes.

>> One thing is the fact that the world has serious problems.

Serious problems from the point of view of conflict, serious problems from the point of view of inequality, serious problems from the point of view of climate, serious problems from the point of view of, I mean, no guardrails in relation to technological development, namely artificial intelligence.

The world has serious problems.

And of course, the UN has to deal with those serious problems.

We are making an effort in order to reform ourselves.

We have a reform program that is being implemented at the present moment.

We call it UN80.

We have reduced, because we need to be more effective and cost-effective, the budget for next year in 15%.

I think we are probably the only big institution in the world, or country in the world, that is able to do it at 15% without losing the capacity to act, just by improved efficiency within the organization.

So that's what I was going to ask you, with a 15% cut, do you feel confident that the UN's capabilities to provide services around the world?

More capable.

So when you make the system more slim and more unified, you gain in efficiency.

And on the other hand, we are looking into the mandates for their potential reform, and we'll be presenting some structural changes in the whole of the UN system, including mergers of different agencies that are until now used to work entirely alone, and that will now merge many of those things in order to be much more effective and cost effective, as I said.

So we are doing this reform because it's necessary.

The liquidity problem is a different thing.

The liquidity problem comes from the fact that the biggest donor of assessed contributions, which are an obligation, I'm not talking about voluntary contributions, we have witnessed a drastic reduction in voluntary contributions by the United States in the beginning of the year, but also of other countries that have reduced because they have moved money from development, cooperation, humanitarian aid to defence, so it is not the US alone.

We are taking some emergency measures in order to not, it's not the reform, it's emergency measures in order to reduce costs, but that with an implication which is many things that we were doing that are necessary we will no longer be able to do.

in the humanitarian field.

I mean the programs of fight against hunger, the programs of vaccination, the programs of the treatment of HIV/AIDS that suffered huge cuts around the world for lack of financing.

So those are, that's a liquidity problem.

When you have a problem of efficiency, you solve it reforming.

When you have a problem of liquidity, you have to cut whatever you can cut.

And when you cut whatever you can cut, the impact is not in the organization, the impact is in those we work for.

But what I'm more worried about is if we will have to adopt, and we are on the verge of having to adopt, an emergency cut in peacekeeping operations that could have a detrimental impact on the protection of civilians and on the stabilizing effect that many of these forces still do, taking into account the enormous difficulties that peacekeeping faces in a world where, as you mentioned, there is total impunity, and in a world where sometimes peacekeepers are not there to keep the peace, but are there to face terrorist groups, rebels that are sometimes better armed than the peacekeepers, in conditions that are extremely difficult.

So to close this conversation, do you feel like we're heading towards global conflict in this environment right now?

I still hope not.

I still believe that there is a level of rationality that in the end will prevail.

And when I see the different actors that are playing, I see that they always, and I'm talking about the big powers, I'm not talking about smaller ones, but in the conflicts among them, they always stop one step before what could be a major confrontation.

So we have to hope that's still the case.

Let's hope so.

Thank you, Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Thank you very much.

And now to Puppet Regime, where as the United States steps back from the world stage, everyone else wants a slice of the pie.

Roll that tasty tape.

Comrade Xi Jinping, Vladimir and Narendra, thank you for this meeting where we demonstrate again our unity against American threats.

And bullying.

And arrogance.

And new Sabrina Carpenter album.

Vladimir, why you always so provocative?

Okay, guys.

Now let's order a pizza.

Yay!

Okay, who wants what on this pizza?

Pepperoni.

Spicy, I like it.

No.

What do you mean no?

I am a vegetarian.

This crap again.

Okay, no problem.

Let's just do half and half.

I want little more than half, but... It's a pizza, not Ukraine, Vladimir.

Now remember what unites us.

Okay, how about a little bit of oil on the pizza?

I love it when people order more oil.

Very typical.

The usual suspects always want people to order more oil.

But they never ask who will pay the price.

Companhier, let's not fight.

Okay, one last thing.

We can split this bill four ways, right?

Sounds good to me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.

You two are going to eat way more than me and this guy.

Why should we all pay the same?

Sorry, but this is not exactly a democracy here.

Thanks God for that.

Look, you can all just pay me back later.

Now I'm going to call the server over and make this order.

Why do you get to make this order?

Who else is going to do it?

You?

You want a piece of me?

You want it?

Sure, how about a slice of the Himalayas?

That's our show this week.

Come back next week and if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you want to become an additional member of the United Nations, why don't you check us out?

We can help you at gzeromedia.com www.gzeromedia.com ♪♪ - Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologist.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, health care, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And... [music]