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Global Cooperation 'Under Fire' Due to Lack of Trust - UN Secretary-General

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The world is facing unprecedented challenges which cannot be solved by a single state on its own, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, drawing special attention to the problem of trust lacking between people and authorities, as well as states on the global stage.
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"The international cooperation is under fire. This is the ultimate paradox of today's world… I believe that behind this paradox there is a huge deficit of trust… Our world is suffering from the bad case of trust deficit disorder. It is a deficit at many levels: trust between people and political institutions, trust among countries, trust in international organizations, namely the United Nations itself," the UN Secretary-General Guterres said on Sunday during the keynote address at the Doha Forum adding that many attempted to benefit from that problem.

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He also stressed that the world needed global responses to global challenges more than ever, and the problems couldn't be tackled by a single country independently. 

"We face enormous challenges that cannot be solved by any country on its own. Climate change, the defining challenge of our time, migration and refugees, people on the move everywhere, the multiplication of conflicts that are increasingly interlinked and which itself is linked to newer threats of global terrorism and international criminality," Guterres said on the sidelines of the forum. 

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In addition, the top UN official stressed that the multilateralism and multipolar society alone did not guarantee peace in the world.

"Europe was multipolar 100 years ago. But the frameworks for international cooperation and problem-solving were not there. There were no multilateral institutions in Europe of the pre-WWI and the result was a catastrophic WWI," Guterres indicated.

The UN secretary-general laid special emphasis on preventative measures stating that, given the number of global problems jeopardizing the world's peace and security architecture, the "capacity to prevent" was more important than ever.

The two-day Doha Forum — a global platform for dialogue that brings together leaders in policy from around the world — concluded in the Qatari capital earlier on Sunday. A number of world's prominent politicians and ministers, including Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Kono and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu took part in the event.

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