From the Secretary-General:
‘How would Hammarskjöld have handled this?’
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It will not surprise you to hear that Dag Hammarskjöld is a figure of great importance to me - as he must be for
any Secretary-General. His life and his death, his words and his action, have done more to shape public expectations of the office, and indeed of the Organization, than those of any other man or
woman in its history. His wisdom and his modesty, his unimpeachable integrity and his single-minded devotion to duty, have set a standard for all servants of the international community - and
especially, of course, for his successors - which is simply impossible to live up to. There can be no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-General, as he approaches each new challenge or crisis, than
to ask himself: “How would Hammarskjöld have handled this?” If that is true for any Secretary-General, how much more so for one of my generation, who came of age during the years when Dag
Hammarskjöld personified the United Nations, and began my own career in the UN system within a year of his death.
Four days ago, during my visit to the Congo, I met with a group of representatives of parties involved in the inter-Congolese dialogue as part of the peace process. Their spokesman began the meeting
by telling me how much they appreciated the late Secretary-General’s dedication and the fact that he gave his life for peace in their country. And he asked us to pay tribute to
Hammarskjöld’s memory by observing a minute of silence. Everyone got up. I found it very moving that people could feel like that about him after forty years.
In Zambia, too - which, as you know, was where he actually died - Hammarskjöld’s death is commemorated annually. The Zambian Government, together with the Swedish Government and with the
United Nations system, has launched a “living memorial”, which includes a programme to educate young Africans as messengers of peace, as well as a Centre for Peace, Good Governance and Human Rights.
There could be no better way to commemorate him than by promoting these ideals, which he held so dear.
If Dag were to walk through that door just now and ask me what are the main problems the United Nations is dealing with today, I could easily answer in a way that would make him think nothing much
had changed. I could talk to him not only about the Congo, but about the Middle East or Cyprus, or the relations between India and Pakistan, and it would all seem very familiar. But I could also tell
him things that he would find very unfamiliar, though some would surprise him less than others, and some would gratify him more than others.
He would probably be relieved, but not surprised, to hear that China is now represented at the United Nations by the government that actually governs the vast majority of Chinese people. It would
surprise him much more to learn that the Soviet Union no longer exists. But he could only be pleased to find that there is no longer an unbridgeable ideological difference between the permanent
members of the Security Council.
He might be struck by the number of conflicts that the United Nations is dealing with today that are within, rather than between, States - though the experience of the Congo would have prepared him
for this - and also by the number of regional organizations that have developed as partners for the United Nations in different parts of the world. I feel sure, in any case, that he would be pleased
to see the way United Nations peacekeeping has developed, from the model that he and Lester Pearson so brilliantly improvised in 1956 to something much more diverse and complex, which is often more
accurately described as peace-building. And I imagine he would be equally impressed by the wide range of issues that the United Nations is now called upon to face outside the traditional security
arena - from climate change to HIV/AIDS.
He would be gratified, and perhaps not all that surprised, to hear that human rights and democracy are now generally accepted as world norms, though he might well be distressed to see how far in many
countries the practice still falls short of the rhetoric.
He would definitely be distressed to learn that within the last decade genocide had again disfigured the face of humanity - and that well over a billion people today are living in extreme poverty. I
think he would see preventing the recurrence of the former, and putting an end to the latter, as the most urgent tasks confronting us in this new century.
He would no doubt be impressed by the speed and intensity of modern communications, and momentarily confused by talk of faxes and satellite phones, let alone e-mails and the Internet. But I’m
sure he would be quick to grasp the advantages and disadvantages of all these innovations, both for civilization as a whole and for the conduct of diplomacy in particular.
What is clear is that his core ideas remain highly relevant in this new international context. The challenge for us is to see how they can be adapted to take account of it in this new
environment.
One idea which inspired all his words and actions as Secretary-General was his belief that the United Nations had to be a dynamic instrument, through which its Members would collectively develop
forms of executive action. During his time in office he became increasingly sensitive to the fact that some Member States did not share this vision, but regarded the United Nations as only a static
conference machinery for resolving conflicts of interests and ideologies with a view to peaceful coexistence.
In the Introduction to his last Annual Report - a magisterial work, which reads almost as if he was consciously writing his political testament - Hammarskjöld argued that those who regarded the
Organization in this way were not paying adequate attention to certain essential principles of the Charter. He showed that the Charter clearly implies the existence of “an international community,
for which the Organization is an instrument and an expression”. The overriding purpose of this community was to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, and to do this it had to follow
certain key principles.
These were:
First, “equal political rights” - which encompassed both the “sovereign equality” of all Member States, in Article 2 of the Charter, and “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms”, in
Article 1.
Second, “equal economic opportunities” - spelt out in Article 55 as the promotion of “higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development”, as
well as “solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems”.
Third, “justice” - by which he meant that the international community must be “based on law ... with a judicial procedure through which law and justice could be made to apply”.
And finally, the prohibition of the use of armed force, “save in the common interest”.
These principles, Hammarskjöld argued, are incompatible with the idea of the United Nations as merely a conference or debating chamber - as indeed is the authority the Charter gives to its
principal organs, and particularly to the Security Council, which clearly has both legislative and executive powers.
| “...we still face, from time to time, attempts by Member States to reduce the United Nations to a conference mechanism...” |
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