DAG HAMMARSKJöLD

'Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld' () (July 29, 1905 – September 18, 1961) was a Swedish diplomat and the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. He served from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961.

Contents

Early life

UN Secretary General

Death

Nobel Peace Prize

Legacy

References

See also

External links

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. On December 20, 1954, he was elected to take his father's vacated seat in the Swedish Academy. In 1951 Hammarskjöld became vice chairman of 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.

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 should be able to take emergency action without the prior approval of the Security Council or the General Assembly.
During his terms, 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" [1].
Hammarskjöld denied Patrice Lumumba's request to help force Katanga to rejoin the Congo, causing Lumumba to turn to the Soviets for help

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 plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He and fifteen others perished. There is still speculation as to the cause of the crash.
The explanation of investigators at the time is that Hammarskjöld's aircraft descended too low on its approach to Ndola's airport at night. The crew had filed no flight plan for security reasons. No evidence of a bomb, surface-to-air missile or hijacking has ever been presented.
On August 19, 1998, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), revealed that recently-uncovered letters had implicated British MI5, American CIA and South African intelligence services in the 1961 crash of Dag Hammarskjöld's plane. 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. [2]
On July 29, 2005, exactly 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. [3]
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 90s. [4]
Another possible explanation is that Hammarskjöld's plane struck some treetops as it was preparing for landing. Hammarskjöld was the only person whose body was separate from the wreckage and therefore not burnt due to his aversion to seatbelts. He was thrown from the crash or was able to crawl away from the plane, but his injuries were severe enough that he was already dead by the time the plane was found.
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. [5] 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.
Hammarskjold is still the only U.N. Secretary-General to die in office.

Nobel Peace Prize

Hammarskjöld received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1961, having been nominated before his death.

Legacy

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 United Nations Library was dedicated on 16 November 1961 in honour of the late Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.
A Manhattan park near the United Nations headquarters is called ''Dag Hammarskjold Plaza''. He is also commemorated as a peacemaker in the Calendar of Saints of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on September 18.
Later on, In recognition of Hammarskjöld's efforts, a middle school was constructed in his honor. The School is located in Wallingford, Connecticut.
A High school in Thunder Bay Ontario Canada (formerly Port Arthur) was named after him when it opened on May 22, 1963. Hammarskjold High School
A Middle School is also named after him, built in 1961, located in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Hammarskjold Middle School
In 1962 the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation was created as Sweden’s national memorial to Dag Hammarskjöld.[6]
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.^[1]

References

1.

See also

★ Olof Palme

★ Bernt Carlsson

External links

★ 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

★ UN assassination plot denied

★ Plot to kill Hammarskjöld

★ Media briefing by Archbishop Desmond Tutu

★ 18 September 1961 UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld is killed