Dag Hammarskjöld
The Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld (1905-1961) was the Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Rhodesia in September 1961.
Dag Hammarskjöld was born July 29 1905 in Jönköping, Sweden, although he lived most of childhood in Uppsala. He was a fourth and youngest son of the Swedish Prime Minister (1914-1917) Hjalmar Hammarskjöld. His ancestors had served the Swedish crown since the 17th century. He studied in the university of Uppsala where he graduated with Master of Arts, degree in political economy and a Bachelor of Law Degree. He then moved to Stockholm.
In 1930-1934 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 doctor's degree from the Stockholm University in 1933. In 1936 Hammarskjöld became a secretary in the Bank of Sweden and soon became an undersecretary of finance. In 1941-1948 he served as a chairman of the Bank of Sweden.
After the World War Two Hammarskjöld began to work as Under-secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated, for example, government plans to alleviate the economic problems of the post-war period.
In 1947 Hammarskjöld was appointed to the Foreign Office and 1949 became a Secretary-General of the Foreign Office. He was a delegate in the Paris conference that established the Marshall Plan. In 1948 he was again in Paris I conference for the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. 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. Althought Hammarskjöld served with a cabinet dominantly composed of 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 General Assembly in 1952 in New York. 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 in March 31 with the majority of 10 out of eleven states. UN General assembly elected him in session in April 7-10 with votes of 57 out of 60. In 1957 he was re-elected.
Hammarskjöld started his term by establishing his own secretariat of 4000 administrators. He set up regulations that defined their responsibilities. He insisted that the secretary-general should be able to take emergency action without prior approval of the Security Council or the General Assembly.
During his terms, Hammarskjöld tried to soothe the relations between Israel and Arab states. In 1956 he went to mainland China to negotiate a release of 15 US pilots that had served in the Korean War and captured by Chinese. In 1956 he established the United Stations Emergency Force (UNEF). In 1957 he intervened in the Suez Crisis.
In 1960 the newly independent Congo asked UN aid in the escalating civil strife. Hammarskjöld made four trips to Congo. In September 1960 Soviet Union denounced his decision to send UN force to keep peace. They demanded his resignation and replacement of the office of secretary general with a three-man troika.
In September 1961 he found out about the fighting between noncombatant UN forces and Katanga troops of Moise Tsombe. He was enroute to negotiate a cease-fire in the night of September 17-18 when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He and fifteen others perished.
Hammarskjöld received posthumously the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1961. His only book Vägmärken (Markings) was published in 1963
Rumors that Hammarskjöld was a homosexual remain unproven.
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Preceded by: Trygve Lie | United Nations Secretaries-General |
Succeeded by: U Thant |
