Dag Hammarskjöld
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Dag Hammarskjöld
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| In office April 10, 1953 – September 18, 1961 |
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| Preceded by | Trygve Lie |
| Succeeded by | U Thant |
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| Born | July 29, 1905 Jönköping, Sweden |
| Died | September 18, 1961 (aged 56) Ndola, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland |
| Nationality | Swedish |
| Religion | Lutheran/Church of Sweden |
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (Dag Hammarskjöld ) (July 29, 1905 – September 18, 1961) was a Swedish diplomat, Christian mystic, and the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. He served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961 under mysterious circumstances. The exact cause of his death has never been conclusively determined. He is the only person to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously.[1]
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[edit] Early life
Dag Hammarskjöld was born in Jönköping, although he lived most of his childhood in Uppsala. He was the fourth and youngest son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, Prime Minister of Sweden (1914–1917), and Agnes Almquist. His ancestors had served the Swedish Crown since the 17th century. He studied at Uppsala University where he graduated with a Master's degree in political economy and a Bachelor of Law degree. He then moved to Stockholm.
From 1930 to 1934, he was a secretary of a governmental committee on unemployment. He also wrote his economics thesis Konjunkturspridningen (The Spread of the Business Cycle) and received his Doctorate from Stockholm University in 1933. In 1936, Hammarskjöld became a secretary in the Bank of Sweden and soon he was an undersecretary of finance. From 1941 to 1948, he served as a chairman of the Bank of Sweden.
Early in 1945, he was appointed as adviser to the cabinet on financial and economic problems, and coordinated government plans to alleviate the economic problems of the post-war period.
In 1947, Hammarskjöld was appointed to Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and in 1949 he became the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He was a delegate in the Paris conference that established the Marshall Plan. In 1948, he was again in Paris to attend conference for the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation. In 1950, he became a head of Sweden delegation to UNISCAN. In 1951, he became a cabinet minister without portfolio and in effect Deputy Foreign Minister. Although Hammarskjöld served with a cabinet dominated by the Social Democrats, he never officially joined any political party. In 1951, Hammarskjöld became vice chairman of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in Paris. He became the chairman of the Swedish delegation to the General Assembly in New York in 1952. On December 20, 1954, he was elected to take his father's vacated seat in the Swedish Academy.
[edit] UN Secretary General
When Trygve Lie resigned from his post as UN Secretary General in 1953, the Security Council decided to recommend Hammarskjöld to the post. It came as a surprise to him. He was selected on March 31 with the majority of 10 out of eleven states. The UN General Assembly elected him in the April 7–10 session, by 57 votes out of 60. In 1957, he was re-elected.
Hammarskjöld started his term by establishing his own secretariat of 4,000 administrators. He set up regulations that defined their responsibilities. He insisted that the secretary-general be able to take emergency action without the prior approval of either the Security Council or General Assembly.
During his term, Hammarskjöld tried to soothe relations between Israel and the Arab states. In 1955, he went to mainland China to negotiate the release of 15 US pilots who had served in the Korean War and been captured by the Chinese. In 1956, he established the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). In 1957, he intervened in the Suez Crisis.
In 1960, the former Belgian colony and now newly-independent Congo asked for UN aid in defusing the escalating civil strife. (See Congo Crisis). Hammarskjöld made four trips to the Congo. His efforts towards the decolonisation of Africa were considered insufficient by the USSR; in September 1960, they denounced his decision to send a UN emergency force to keep the peace. They demanded his resignation, and the replacement of the office of secretary-general by a three-man directorate with a built-in veto, the “troika”. The objective was, citing the memoirs of the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to “equally represent interests of three groups of countries: capitalist, socialist and recently independent.”[2] Hammarskjöld denied Patrice Lumumba's request to help force Katanga to rejoin the Congo, causing Lumumba to turn to the Soviets for help.
[edit] Death
In September 1961, Hammarskjöld found out about the fighting between non-combatant UN forces and Katanga troops of Moise Tshombe. He was en route to negotiate a cease-fire on the night of September 17-18 when his DC-6B plane (SE-BDY) crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). The crew had filed no flight plan (for security reasons), and a decoy aircraft (OO-RIC) went (via a different route) ahead of Hammarskjöld's aircraft. He and fifteen others perished.
[edit] Official inquiry
Following the death of Hammarskjöld, Nepalese diplomat Rishikesh Shaha was elected by the UN General Assembly to head an inquiry into the death of Hammarskjöld.[3]
The explanation of investigators at the time is that Hammarskjöld's aircraft descended too low on its approach to Ndola's airport in clear weather at night. No evidence of a bomb, surface-to-air missile, or hijacking has ever been presented, even though, following the crash, 180 men searched a six square kilometre area of the last sector of the aircraft's flightpath, looking for such evidence. Neither was any evidence of foul play found in the wreckage of the aircraft. The sole survivor, one of three bodyguards on board, recalled nothing that would indicate anything other than a controlled flight into terrain crash in the interviews he gave before he died of his injuries.[4]
[edit] Conspiracy theories
On August 19, 1998, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), stated that recently-uncovered letters had implicated British MI5, American CIA and South African intelligence services in the crash. One TRC letter said that a bomb in the aircraft's wheel-bay was set to detonate when the wheels came down for landing. Tutu said that the veracity of the letters was unclear; the British Foreign Office suggested that they may have been created as Soviet misinformation.[5]
On July 29, 2005, 100 years after Hammarskjöld's birth, the Norwegian Major General, Bjørn Egge, gave an interview to the newspaper Aftenposten on the events surrounding his death. According to Egge, who was the first UN officer to see the body, Hammarskjöld had a hole in his forehead, and this hole was subsequently airbrushed from photos taken of the body. It appeared to Egge that Hammarskjöld had been thrown from the plane, and grass and leaves in his hands might indicate that he survived the crash, and had tried to scramble away from the wreckage. Egge does not claim directly that the wound was a gunshot wound, and his statement does not align with Archbishop Tutu's information or with the findings of the official inquiry.[6] In an interview on March 24, 2007 on the Norwegian TV channel NRK, an anonymous retired mercenary claimed to have shared a room with an unnamed South African mercenary who claimed to have shot Hammarskjöld. The alleged killer was claimed to have died in the late 1990s. [7]
[edit] Legacy
Hammarskjöld received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, having been nominated before his death.
Historian Paul Kennedy hailed Hammarskjöld in his book The Parliament of Man as perhaps the greatest Secretary-General because of his ability to shape events in contrast to his successors.
The Dag Hammarskjöld Library, part of the United Nations headquarters was dedicated on 16 November 1961 in honour of the late Secretary-General.
There is also a Dag Hammarskjöld Library at his alma mater, Uppsala University.
A Manhattan park near the United Nations headquarters is called Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, as are several of the surrounding office buildings. He is also commemorated as a peacemaker in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on September 18.
A number of schools have been named after Hammarskjöld, including Hammarskjold Middle School in East Brunswick Township, New Jersey, USA, Dag Hammarskjold Middle School in Wallingford, Connecticut, USA, Dag Hammarskjold Elementary School in Parma, Ohio, and Hammarskjold High School in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
In 1962 the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation was created as Sweden’s national memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld.[8]
Carleton University awarded its first ever honorary degree to Hammarskjold in 1954 when it presented him with a Legum Doctor, honoris causa. The University has continued this tradition by convocating an honorary doctorate upon every subsequent Secretary General of the United Nations.
On 22 July 1997 the Security Council in resolution 1121(1997) established the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal in recognition and commemoration of those who have lost their life as a result of service in peacekeeping operations under the operational control and authority of the United Nations.[9]
His only book, Vägmärken (Markings), was published in 1963. A collection of his diary reflections, the book starts in 1925, when he was 20 years old, and ends at his death in 1961.[10] In the book, Hammarskjöld reveals himself as a Christian Mystic and describes his diplomat deed in the way of a “inner journey”; the book became popular with U.S. students and also with the former Swedish archbishop, K. G. Hammar.
Hammarskjöld is still the only U.N. Secretary-General to die in office.
[edit] Spirituality
Although as an adult he rejected his family's Lutheran faith, he continued to search for spiritual meaning. His collection of spiritual notes was published posthumously under the title Markings, which instantly became a best seller and a Christian classic.
[edit] References
- ^ Common misconceptions about the Nobel Peace Prize. The Associated Press. 11 October 2007.
- ^ http://www.un.org/russian/av/radio/history60/11history60.htm (in Russian)
- ^ Nepalnews.com (newsflash) Arc520
- ^ Macarthur Job, Air Disaster Volume 4, Aerospace Publications Pty Ltd, 2001 ISBN 187567148X, p 142
- ^ "UN assassination plot denied," BBC World, August 19, 1998. Retrieved October 13, 2007.
- ^ http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article1087787.ece
- ^ http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article1706597.ece
- ^ http://www.interenvironment.org/cipa/dhf.htm
- ^ United Nations Security Council Verbatim Report meeting 3802 on 22 July 1997 (retrieved 2007-08-21)
- ^ http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/03/har05003.html
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Swedish website about Dag Hammarskjöld including photos and video clips
- Kofi Annan, Dag Hammarskjöld and the 21st century, The Fourth Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture 6 September 2001, Uppsala University (pdf)
- Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
- Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General: the official website of the UN
- Dag Hammarskjöld Library, United Nations, New York
- Markings - "the spiritual diary of Dag Hammarskjöld"
- Biography
- The Nobel Prize
- Letters say Hammarskjöld's death Western plot
- Plot to kill Hammarskjöld
- Media briefing by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
- 18 September 1961 UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld is killed
| Preceded by Hjalmar Hammarskjöld |
Swedish Academy, Seat No.17 1954-1961 |
Succeeded by Erik Lindegren |
| Preceded by Trygve Lie Norway |
United Nations Secretary-General 1953–1961 |
Succeeded by U Thant Burma |
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