“Divides are growing deeper. Inequalities are growing wider. Challenges are spreading farther,” Guterres said at the annual gathering of leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

“We have a duty to act. And yet we are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction,” he said.

The diagnosis was echoed by some of the more than 100 leaders attending the week-long event, but very little consensus emerged over how to bridge divides among nations deeply conflicted about how to respond to the war in Ukraine.