Dag Hammarskjöld

• His Markings

Following from internet:

• Born 29/7/1905
• He was a son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917.
• He served as the second secretary-general of the United Nations from April 1953 (In other words, he took over an office which had already been given form and an administrative apparatus which had acquired a certain amount of tradition.)
• until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. (which is debated even now whether ...)
• Fully aware of the magnitude and complexity of his task, he devoted himself to it completely, exerting all his determination and strength in carrying it out. In a private letter written in 1953 he says: “To know that the goal is so significant that everything else must be set aside gives a great sense of liberation and makes one indifferent to anything that may happen to oneself.”
• From the very first he placed great importance on the solution of disputes through the medium of private discussion between representatives of the individual countries, pursuing what has come to be known as the “method of quiet diplomacy.” There is, of course, nothing new in this, as informal meetings of this kind have always been and will always be an important part of the work necessary to achieve agreement between conflicting views
•  In every situation with which he was faced he had one goal in mind: to serve the ideas sponsored by the United Nations. He called himself an international civil servant, with the emphasis on the word “international.”5 As such he had only one master, and that was the United Nations.
• Some disputes he settled:
• The first and most important disputes which fell to his lot to settle arose in the Middle East. The first of these was the conflict between Israel and the Arab States in 1955. As the representative of the UN, he succeeded in easing the tension by negotiating an agreement between each of the parties involved and the UN, setting up demarcation lines and establishing UN observation posts. Personally he did not believe that the relaxation of tension would prove permanent, and he was right in his surmise.
• In the following year, in September of 1956, the conflict that arose between Great Britain, France, and Egypt, after Egypt had nationalized the Suez Canal, was submitted to the Security Council. 
• He also made a major contribution to the solution of a crisis between Lebanon, Jordan, and the Arab States in 1958. In this, both the United States and Great Britain were involved.
• The concept of peace contained in the UN Charter was always to remain Dag Hammarskjöld’s guiding principle in tackling such problems as that presented by the liberation of the Congo on June 30, 1960.
• Economist. He had studied widely, and his knowledge ranged far beyond his chosen field. His special subject, however, was regarded as economics, in which he took his doctor’s degree in 1934, with a thesis entitled “Konjunkturspridningen.”1 He had by then already obtained degrees in philology and in law - Expansion of Market Trends.
• Hammarskjöld was and remains well regarded internationally as a capable diplomat and administrator, and his efforts to resolve various global crises led to him being the only posthumous recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize 1961 was awarded to Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld "for developing the UN into an effective and constructive international organization, capable of giving life to the principles and aims expressed in the UN Charter"

Dag Hammarskjöld was exposed to criticism and violent, unrestrained attacks, but he never departed from the path he had chosen from the very first: the path that was to result in the UN’s developing into an effective and constructive international organization, capable of giving life to the principles and aims expressed in the UN Charter, administered by a strong Secretariat served by men who both felt and acted internationally. The goal he always strove to attain was to make the UN Charter the one by which all countries regulated themselves.

Today this goal may seem remote; as we know, it is remote. Dag Hammarskjöld fully realized this, and in a speech in Chicago in 1960 he said:

“Working at the edge of the development of human society is to work on the brink of the unknown. Much of what is done will one day prove to have been of little avail. That is no excuse for the failure to act in accordance with our best understanding, in recognition of its limits but with faith in the ultimate result of the creative evolution in which it is our privilege to cooperate.”

The speech -  "It is probably Hammarskjöld's best exposition of his perspective on the United Nations, and on his own office of Secretary-General, as part of a creative evolutionary process in the development of international institutions."

His driving force was his belief that goodwill among men and nations would one day create conditions in which peace would prevail in the world.

**

Suez Canal - Is owned by Egypt.The Suez Canal (/ˈsuː.ɛz/; Arabic: قناة السويس, Qanāt as-Suwais) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt). It is the border between Africa and Asia. The 193.30-kilometre-long (120.11 mi) canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia. 

The canal officially opened on 17 November 1869.

The canal was the property of the Egyptian government, but European shareholders, mostly British and French, owned the concessionary company which operated it until July 1956, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised it—an event which led to the Suez Crisis of October–November 1956.

The canal is operated and maintained by the state-owned Suez Canal Authority[6] (SCA) of Egypt. Under the Convention of Constantinople, it may be used "in time of war as in time of peace, by every vessel of commerce or of war, without distinction of flag."[7] Nevertheless, the canal has played an important military strategic role as a naval short-cut and choke point. Navies with coastlines and bases on both the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea (Egypt and Israel) have a particular interest in the Suez Canal. After Egypt closed the Suez Canal at the beginning of the Six-Day War on 5 June 1967, the canal remained closed for eight years, reopening on 5 June 1975

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Congo

The Congo episode was a turning point in UN history — and the first time it used military force in a decolonization context. Here’s why:

Background: A rushed independence and chaos

• The Belgian Congo (modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) was one of the most brutally exploited colonies in Africa. Under King Leopold II and later the Belgian state, it suffered enormous violence and resource extraction.
• Under pressure from Congolese nationalists and the global decolonization movement, Belgium abruptly granted independence on 30 June 1960 — with almost no preparation. Only a handful of Congolese had higher education or military experience, and the state apparatus was weak.
• Within days, the Force Publique (army) mutinied, provinces like Katanga (rich in minerals) declared secession with Belgian support, and Belgian troops re-entered the country “to protect their citizens,” in practice propping up separatists and mining interests.
• Congo’s new Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, and President, Joseph Kasavubu, appealed to the UN for help. The Security Council responded quickly
• First use of armed force in a decolonization context: The UN acted not against an aggressor state, but to defend a newly independent state from colonial interference and fragmentation.
• Test of self-determination: The crisis was seen as a battleground between true independence and neo-colonial control.
• Shift in UN peacekeeping: ONUC set precedents for future operations — including the principle that UN forces could use force to protect sovereignty and prevent the reversal of decolonization.
• UN was founded 24/10/1945
• Why Congo was a first: Because it was the first major post-colonial crisis where a newly independent state’s sovereignty was threatened by colonial powers attempting to retain influence, and the UN stepped in — even militarily — to uphold the principle of decolonization

 When the Congo achieved its independence on June 30, 1960, it was constituted as a unified state. Kasavubu7 was elected president and Lumumba8 was made prime minister. Lumumba had always supported the idea of a unified Congo.The new government was faced with a difficult situation: the administration, which had been in Belgian hands, had broken down; the army had mutinied; a large proportion of the white population had fled; Belgian troops had intervened – in part to protect the white inhabitants; and on July 1, the province of Katanga declared itself an independent state. All these factors – the collapse of the administration, the mutiny of the armed forces, and finally Katanga’s secession from the rest of the Congo form the background for the request made to the UN by Kasavubu and Lumumba on July 1 for civil assistance and on July 12 for military aid. In a cable dispatched on July 13, Lumumba emphasized that UN military assistance was needed to protect the Congo against an attack by Belgian troops.

It was the first time that the UN used armed force to intervene actively in the solution of a problem involving the termination of colonial rule. In the resolution unanimously adopted by the Security Council, Belgium was ordered to withdraw her troops from Congo territory, and the Secretary-General was authorized in consultation with the Congo government to provide whatever military aid proved necessary until such time as the country’s own forces were, in the opinion of the Congo government, in a position to carry out their functions.

As the days and months went by, their position became no easier. All conceivable obstacles to the success of the UN’s Congo venture seemed to pile up: disagreement among the Congolese themselves on the question of unified state or confederation, the support Katanga received from Belgium, Soviet aid to Lumumba, the dissolution of the central government, the military rule under Mobutu, the murder of Lumumba, increasingly violent Russian attacks on Hammarskjöld and UN action. A complete account of all that occurred cannot be given here; but an examination of the available documents covering this period will establish that it was the United Nations alone that worked to realize the establishment of the Republic of the Congo as an independent nation, and that the man who above all others deserves the credit for this is Dag Hammarskjöld.

In the calm and dignified answer which Dag Hammarskjöld made to the Soviet leaders, he said that he would remain at his post as long as this was necessary to defend and strengthen the authority of the United Nations. And he added: It is not Soviet Russia or any of the great powers that need the vigilance and protection of the UN; it is all the others.

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His speech

In fact, international constitutional law is still in an embryonic stage; we are still in the transition between institutional systems of international coexistence and constitutional systems of international cooperation. It is natural that, at such a stage of transition, theory is still vague, mixed with elements of a political nature and dependent on what basically may be considered sociological theory.

What seems imperative is to push forward institutionally and, eventually, constitutionally all along the line, guided by current needs and experiences, without preconceived ideas of the ultimate form.

When the United Nations was created, the founders had the experience of the League of Nations and also the experience of such a highly evolved constitutional pattern as that established on the American continent. A strong influence from both these experiences can be seen in the Charter of the United Nations.

The system we find in the United Nations has its strength and its weakness. In the light of the experiences of fifteen years, undoubtedly some changes of the pattern would be made if the Charter were to be revised. These changes, however, would probably not refer to the various organs as such, but rather to their relative authority--that is to say to the division of responsibilities-and to their methods of operation.  

// his speech is so much about the problem of organisation. Form, function, and how best to organise for maximum efficiency and sustainability

The two risks indicated call for careful thought before we push much further forward. We must seek the optimum balance between a system with a large number of autonomous bodies and aa system with strong concentration of tasks within a lesser number of organizations. The way will have to be found by trial and error, but planning is necessary because of the difficulty to take a step backward or to change fundamentally what once has been established. Probably, new forms will have to be devised, not only, as already indicated, for an integration of activities among autonomous organizations, but also for the delegation of powers within this or that organization without a breaking up of its inner unity.

 and the case I have described, therefore, highlights one of those essential complications which characterize in the constitutional field the effort to work in the direction of organized international cooperation. At an experimental stage, such difficulties may be faced on a day-to-day basis, but in the long run they are likely to require imaginative and constructive constitutional innovations. 

For example. The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the chief administrative officer of the Organization and, as such, the only elected member of the Secretariat. The founders of the United Nations may in this context have looked to the American Constitution. The chief of any government, or the Chief Executive of the United States, has the assistance of a group of close collaborators who represent the same basic approach, and to whom he therefore can delegate a considerable part of his responsibilities. On the basis of universality, especially in a divided world but generally speaking as long as nations have opposing interests, no similar arrangement is possible within the United Nations. This may have been understood in San Francisco, but I guess that it was felt that it did not matter too much as the Secretary-General had mainly administrative responsibilities. However, the position of the Office of the Secretary-General within the United Nations, explained in part by the fact that he is the only elected officer in principle representing all members, has led to increasingly widespread diplomatic and political activities. 

Perhaps a future generation, which knows the outcome of our present efforts, will look at them with some irony. They will see where we fumbled and they will find it difficult to understand why we did not see the direction more clearly and work more consistently toward the target it indicates. So it will always be, but let us hope that they will not find any reason to criticize us because of a lack of that combination of steadfastness of purpose and flexibility of approach which alone can guarantee that the possibilities which we are exploring will have been tested to the full. Working at the edge of the development of human society is to work on the brink of the unknown. Much of what is done will one day prove to have been of little avail. That is no excuse for the failure to act in accordance with our best understanding, in recognition of its limits but with faith in the ultimate result of the creative evolution in which it is our privilege to cooperate.