SALAMANCA, Spain — UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned on Friday that “the unlawful use of force is becoming normalised” and that “borders are being redrawn by force of arms”, in a speech at Spain’s University of Salamanca after receiving an honorary doctorate, UN News reported. The address, delivered less than two months before his term ends early next year, was one of the outgoing secretary-general’s clearest defences of the rules-based order the United Nations was built to uphold.

Source: UN News, Nov 6 2026 — World News in Brief: Guterres calls out ‘normalisation’ of force

“After two world wars, the 1945 Charter prohibited the threat or use of force, except in the exceptional cases that it itself foresees. This system is not perfect. But for more than eighty years, it has helped prevent a third world war,” Guterres said, according to the UN’s own UNifeed transcript of the ceremony, held on the third day of his visit to Spain. “Today, that system is cracking,” he continued, adding that “the illegal use of force is becoming normalized” and that “too many States apply international law selectively.”

Source: UNifeed, Nov 6 2026 — Spain / Guterres Salamanca University (full address transcript)

‘From Ukraine to Sudan… civilians are the first victims’

The UN chief named the wars in which he said civilians are paying first: “from Ukraine to Sudan, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Sahel, and in the Middle East, from Gaza to Yemen, civilians are the first victims,” the transcript records. UN News summarised the same passage in its daily brief: from Ukraine to Sudan, the Sahel and Gaza, civilians are the first to suffer, while “every crime that goes unpunished paves the way for the next.” He invoked Francisco de Vitoria, the 16th-century theologian who taught at Salamanca and is seen as a forerunner of international law, and whose legacy the university was marking 500 years after the School of Salamanca. “The Charter lays down the same rule for everyone,” he said. “No exceptions. No double standards.” And: “peace is that: power subject to law.”

Guterres also said his duty as secretary-general was “to engage in dialogue with everyone. But impartiality is not neutrality in the face of the Charter’s violations.” He called the lack of a permanent Security Council seat for Africa and for Latin America and the Caribbean “a historic injustice that we must rectify”, UN News reported, and noted that military spending is breaking records while aid is plummeting — a contrast he returned to as the material side of the same erosion.

Refugees, climate and machines that must not kill

The address ranged across the five tests he named. On displacement, he told students, faculty and officials that “nobody chooses to be a refugee. And no migratory situation strips a human being of their fundamental rights,” and that access to asylum procedures and respect for non-refoulement — the rule against returning people to danger — “remain fundamental obligations”, the transcript records. On climate, he said “climate chaos fuels conflicts: over water, land, and resources,” called fossil fuels “today the most harmful, the most expensive — and the least secure option”, and said renewables are already the cheapest source of new electricity in most countries. On technology, he was bluntest: “no machine should ever decide over a human being’s life or death,” and “lethal autonomous weapons without human control must be banned.” He closed: “let’s set the rules while we still can.”

What happens next: nothing is scheduled on the speech itself — no vote follows an honorary-doctorate address. Its test comes in the rooms Guterres named: whether the Security Council, in its coming debates on the wars he listed, treats the Charter’s single rule as binding on allies and adversaries alike — the exact ‘double standards’ charge he left, deliberately, on the table as he heads for the exit.