By Otto Spijkers

18 September 1961, Hammarskjold died in a mysterious plane crash as he entered the skies of what was then Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. The Secretary-General of the United Nations was due to meet rebel leader Moise Tshombe and negotiate a truce with him in the civil war between the Katanga secessionist movement of Tshombe and the Congolese central government. There are quite a lot of theories relating to his death (see e.g. here, here, and here), but many insiders, including Brian Urquhart, believe it was just an accident. In a biography of Hammarskjold written by Urquhart, the story ends as follows:

Only Harold Julien [ONUC chief of security] was alive when the search party finally reached the wreckage on the following afternoon, and he died of burns five days later. Hammarskjold was thrown clear of the wreckage and, alone among the victims, was not burned at all. Although the post-mortem showed that he had probably lived for a short time after the crash, his injuries – a severely fractured spine, several broken ribs, a broken breastbone, a broken thigh, and severe internal hemorrhaging – were certainly fatal. He was lying on his back near a small shrub which had escaped the fire, his face extraordinarily peaceful, a hand clutching a tuft of grass. (Hammarskjold, p. 589.)

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By Otto Spijkers

Article 99 is by far the most important article in the short list of articles in the UN Charter assigning functions to the Secretary-General (articles 97-100). Article 99 explicitly gives the SG important political power. When article 98 still assigns mainly administrative functions to the SG, be it with some political ‘side effects’, article 99 is purely political. SG Dag Hammarskjold (see picture) said that ‘[i]t is article 99 more than any other [article] which was considered by the drafters of the Charter to have transformed the Secretary-General from a purely administrative official to one with an explicit political responsibility’ (Source: p. 335 of Foote, Servant of Peace: A Selection of the Speeches and Statements of Dag Hammarskjold. Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1962.). Continue reading →

By Otto Spijkers

The second Secretary-General in UN history, the Swede Dag Hammarskjold, explored the three bedrock principles of traditional peacekeeping in a report he wrote for the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) stationed in Egypt between November 1957 and June 1967 (this picture and the picture below shows UNEF peacekeepers on duty). This is the report. Continue reading →

By Otto Spijkers

Last week, I spent a few days in Stockholm and surroundings. One thing I did was visit the grave of one of UN’s big heroes: the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold (on the picture you see me at his grave in Uppsala, a small town close to Stockholm where Hammarskjold spent his student days). This visit inspired me to write a few posts about the illustrious Swede. I will start with a short description of the famous clash between him and Nikita Khrushchev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The clash was about the Congo peacekeeping operation (ONUC), which was essentially run by the Secretary-General (at least according to Khrushchev). In following posts, I will write about peacekeeping (Post II) and Article 99 of the UN Charter (Post III). I will also write about his mysterious death (Post IV). Continue reading →

By Otto Spijkers

The Hague presents itself as the city of Peace, justice and Security. With the proliferation of international courts and tribunals in The Hague, it seems almost impossible to keep up with all the legal developments (or lack thereof: yesterday we celebrated the 12th anniversary of the indictment against Mladi? and Karad?i?, both still at large). Fortunately, there’s the Hague Justice Portal, which keeps us up to date on all the developments. One of these developments is the acquirement of a new criminal tribunal: the Hariri Tribunal. Continue reading →