UNITED NATIONS (AP) Facing a swirl of conflicts and crises across a fragmented world, leaders attending this weeks annual U.N. gathering are being challenged: Work together not only on front-burner issues but on modernizing the international institutions born after World War II so they can tackle the threats and problems of the future.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued the challenge a year ago after sounding a global alarm about the survival of humanity and the planet: Come to a Summit of the Future and make a new commitment to multilateralism the foundation of the United Nations and many other global bodies and start fixing the aging global architecture to meet the rapidly changing world.

The U.N. chief told reporters last week that the summit was born out of a cold, hard fact: international challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them. He pointed to out-of-control geopolitical divisions and runaway conflicts, climate change, inequalities, debt and new technologies like artificial intelligence which have no guardrails.

The two-day summit started Sunday, two days before the high-level meeting of world leaders begins at the sprawling U.N. compound in New York City.