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antónio guterres
Israeli Raid on UNRWA Compound Slammed as 'Dangerous Precedent'
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini.
Dec 08, 2025
United Nations officials and others strongly condemned Monday's raid by Israeli authorities on a facility run by the UN's office for Palestinian refugees in occupied East Jerusalem—an act one rights group decried as part of an ongoing effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate" the lifesaving agency.
Israeli police and other officials forcibly entered the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) compound early Monday, pulling down a UN flag on the facility's roof and replacing it with an Israeli one. Israeli officials said the raid was ordered over unpaid taxes.
"They call it 'debt collection'—we call it erasure," Claudia Webbe, a socialist former member of British Parliament, said on social media. "Over 70,000 dead in Gaza, they now seek to kill the memory of the living. The occupation must end."
Police vehicles including motorcycles, trucks, and forklifts entered the compound, while communications were cut and furniture, computer equipment, and other property were seized from the facility, according to UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.
"This latest action represents a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations member state to protect and respect the inviolability of UN premises," Lazzarini said in a statement.
"To allow this represents a new challenge to international law, one that creates a dangerous precedent anywhere else the UN is present across the world," he added.
Secretary-General António Guterres was among the other senior UN officials who condemned Monday's raid.
“This compound remains United Nations premises and is inviolable and immune from any other form of interference,” he said.
“I urge Israel to immediately take all necessary steps to restore, preserve, and uphold the inviolability of UNRWA premises and to refrain from taking any further action with regard to UNRWA premises, in line with its obligations under the charter of the United Nations and its other obligations under international law," Guterres added.
In late 2024, Israeli lawmakers approved a ban on UNRWA in Israel over disproven allegations that some of its staffers were Hamas members who took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. Those accusations led to numerous nations suspending financial support for UNRWA, although most of the countries have since restored funding. Israel has also sought to ban UNRWA from Gaza since early 2024.
Israeli forces have killed more than 370 UNRWA staff members since October 2023 and destroyed or damaged over 300 of the agency's facilities in Gaza. Lazzarini and others have also accused Israeli forces of torturing UNRWA staffers in a bid to force false confessions of Hamas involvement.
In October, the International Court of Justice—which is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel—found that UNRWA has not been infiltrated by Hamas as claimed by Israeli leaders.
Others also condemned Monday's raid, including Human Rights Watch (HRW), which called the action part of an effort "to undermine and ultimately eliminate a United Nations agency providing vital services to millions of Palestinian refugees."
"Governments should condemn Israel's unlawful moves against UNRWA and urgently act to stop further abuses," HRW added.
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'Against Humanity': Leaders Denounce Fossil Fuel-Loving Trump as He Skips Out on Global Climate Summit
“Every fraction of a degree means more hunger, displacement, and loss—especially for those least responsible,” said UN Secretary General António Guterres on Thursday. “This is moral failure—and deadly negligence.”
Nov 07, 2025
As world leaders gathered in Brazil for this year's global summit on the accelerating climate crisis this week, many took note of the absence of US President Donald Trump.
This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) summit comes on the tenth anniversary of the Paris Climate agreement, in which nations committed to adopting policies intended to keep global temperature increases below the threshold of 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, considered a tipping point at which many of the worst ravages of climate change will become irreversible.
Ten years later, progress has fallen far short of the mark, with leaders scrambling to keep the deal’s goals intact—an aim that is likely untenable without the cooperation of the US, the globe’s largest historical emitter of carbon.
America’s president has not only once again pulled the US out of the Paris agreement, but also sought to turn climate denial into public policy and spent his term in office thus far grinding American investment in renewable energy to a halt—actions viewed as extraordinary abdications of responsibility at a time when the globe is ever more rapidly approaching the point of no return for warming.
Fresh on climate advocates' minds are Trump’s comments at the UN General Assembly in September, when he described climate change as the world’s “greatest con job.”
On Thursday, the World Meteorological Organization found that greenhouse gas emissions had reached a record high. Meanwhile, 2025 is on track to be the third hottest year on record, behind only 2024 and 2023.
“Every fraction of a degree means more hunger, displacement, and loss—especially for those least responsible," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday. "This is moral failure—and deadly negligence."
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has emerged as one of the world's leading climate defenders from the heart of the Amazon rainforest, began the conference by delivering an indirect but unmistakable shot at Trump. He denounced the "extremist forces that fabricate fake news and are condemning future generations to life on a planet altered forever by global warming."
Other Latin American leaders were more direct. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, whom Trump recently hit with sanctions and threatened with military action, denounced the US president as "against humanity," as evidenced by "his absence" at the conference.
"The president of the United States at the latest United Nations General Assembly said the climate crisis does not exist," added Chilean President Gabriel Boric. "That is a lie."
In Trump's stead, over 100 other state and local figures from US politics have traveled to Brazil to take part in the conference: Among them are California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.
Another attendee is Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, chair of the Climate Mayors network, who recently applauded Tuesday night’s elections in the US. More than 40 candidates associated with the network came out victorious, as well as the self-described ecosocialist New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
“Our climate mayors did very well on the ballot,” Gallego said to applause at a local leaders forum for COP30. “We want to send this message from the US.”
But despite the US delegation, even with officials from the Trump administration absent, climate campaigners fear the White House may still seek to sabotage the conference from afar. Last month, the administration did just that when it used the threat of tariffs to strong-arm countries into killing what would have been a global-first carbon fee on shipping.
Even without Trump present, COP30 is crawling with fossil fuel lobbyists seeking to stymie progress. A report released Friday from the climate advocacy group Kick Big Polluters Out found that over 5,350 fossil fuel lobbyists have attended UN climate negotiations over the past four years. The corporations they represent are responsible for more than 60% of global emissions.
“These companies have defended their fossil interests by watering down climate action for years," said Fiona Hauke of the German environmental group Urgewald. "As we head towards COP30, we demand transparency and accountability: Keep polluters out of climate talks and make them pay for a just energy transition.”
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Ahead of COP30, UN Report Shows 1.5°C Will Be Breached as Countries Pledge Just 10% Emissions Cut
“The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5°C in the next few years," said UN chief António Guterres. "We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course."
Oct 28, 2025
Ahead of the United Nations' global summit on the climate emergency in Belém, Brazil, a report on countries' climate plans released Tuesday served as both "a progress update and a warning siren," one campaigner said.
According to the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) Synthesis Report, governments have submitted plans to the UN that would reduce fossil fuel emissions by just 10% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels, a fraction of what is needed to keep the planet from warming more than 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures.
The report includes climate action plans from fewer than a third of the nations that signed the Paris Agreement, the legally binding treaty demanding countries take action to limit planetary heating to 1.5°C, a decade ago.
China and the European Union have not yet submitted their NDCs ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), and in the United States, President Donald Trump ordered the country's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement for a second time earlier this year and has been pushing for more fossil fuel extraction while dismantling renewable energy projects.
The report's projection includes a plan that was submitted by the US in the last weeks of the Biden administration, which Trump has said he has no plans to fulfill.
Without officially submitting an NDC, China has pledged to cut its carbon emissions by 7-10% of their peak by 2035, and the EU has been debating a reduction of 62-72.5%.
Judging from the commitments that have been made so far, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told The Guardian and Amazon-based news outlet Sumaúma that the 1.5°C goal will be breached, at least temporarily,
"Overshooting is now inevitable," he said, noting that an international goal should now be to reverse course on emissions in time to return to the 1.5°C mark by the end of the century.
“Let’s recognize our failure,” he told the outlets. “The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5°C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5°C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs."
Guterres said it is "absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon. We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible.”
"The success of COP30 now hinges less on the maths of new targets and more on the politics closing the ambition gap and accelerating a fair and fast transition from fossil fuels to renewables.”
The report was released a week after Brazil's government announced it was opening up the Amazon rainforest to oil drilling even as the country is set to host COP30, where campaigners hope to focus on implementing climate action plans. Earlier this month, researchers in the United Kingdom found that the world's coral reefs have been driven to a tipping point by surging global temperatures.
“Ten years on from Paris, governments are still allowing fossil fuel companies to call the shots," said Illan Zugman, managing director for Latin America at 350.org. "We see progress in words, but not yet in the numbers. Every new oil field or gas terminal wipes out the gains made in these NDCs. Just kilometers from where COP30 will take place, new licenses are being given out. Real climate leadership means drawing the line on fossil fuels now."
Steffen Menzel, program lead for climate diplomacy and geopolitics at the think tank E3G, noted that "while some developed and developing countries are providing clear examples to follow, delays and lackluster pledges from major emitters such as the EU and China have undermined the effectiveness of the Paris Agreement.”
Despite their power and resources, said World Wildlife Fund global NDC enhancement coordinator Shirley Matheson, "major G20 economies still haven’t submitted their targets with less than a fortnight to go before COP30 begins."
“While countries are making genuine progress, the gap between words and action remains dangerously wide," said Matheson. “At COP30, the G20 must stop hesitating and start delivering. It’s time to turn the slow jog into a sprint by supercharging a clean and fair energy transition. This means increasing the share of renewable energy while phasing out fossil fuels, mobilizing climate finance, and ending deforestation and the wider destruction of nature. The world can’t afford delay disguised as diplomacy.”
Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, emphasized that renewables in many countries "are booming and meet all new electricity demand this year and fossil fuels are finally showing signs of peaking."
"Yet, all progress is still far too slow," said Sieber. "The success of COP30 now hinges less on the maths of new targets and more on the politics closing the ambition gap and accelerating a fair and fast transition from fossil fuels to renewables.”
Zugman stressed that many governments around the world "have the technology, the money, and the public support for a clean energy transition."
"What’s missing is political courage," said Zugman. "Until we stop funding fossil fuels and start taxing their billions, we will keep losing precious time.”
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