The UN Secretary-General laid a wreath at the Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial. The UN honored the memory of the second Secretary-General of the Organization Dag Hammarskjöld UN
The UN Headquarters in New York honored the memory of the second UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who died in the line of duty in September 1961. The ceremony was attended by UN leaders, senior diplomats and staff of the Secretariat of the organization.
Those gathered honored the memory of the deceased diplomat with a minute of silence, and UN chief Antonio Guterres laid a wreath at the Dag Hammarskjöld memorial.
“Dag Hammarskjöld is no longer with us. But the ideals that moved him are our ideals: peace, justice and humanity, effective multilateralism and common cause,” Guterres said.
Dag Hammarskjöld became UN Secretary-General in 1953 and was later re-elected for a second term.
During his tenure as UN chief, Hammarskjöld led negotiations to resolve the situation in the Middle East and Africa, and visited dozens of countries.
When he died in a plane crash on September 18, 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld was en route to Ndola in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to broker a ceasefire between the Congolese government and rebels.
“War reigns across the world, destroying lives and communities and taking a huge toll on the staff of the United Nations,” the Secretary-General continued, adding that the UN has lost more colleagues in the past 12 months than at any other time in the organization’s history.
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Guterres stressed that the Future Summit later this month is an opportunity to pick up the baton, to embrace “the spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld’s work” and “reform multilateral institutions” so that they can effectively achieve peace.
The UN chief called on the international community to follow Hammarskjöld’s example and strive for “peace and prosperity for all.”
Several investigations were conducted into the death of the second UN Secretary-General, which found that either adverse weather or pilot error caused the crash of his plane.
However, in 2013, the International Commission of Jurists, consisting of 60 experts from different countries, called on the UN to conduct a new investigation into Hammarskjöld’s death, citing the fact that newly discovered circumstances refute previous versions. One theory is that Hammarskjöld may have died when his plane was shot down.
Antonio Guterres said he remains committed to “finding the truth about what happened on that fateful night in 1961.”