Dag Hammarskjöld’s Credo and The United Nations

Abstract

Firstly, this chapter illustrates the specific constellation of interests within the UN Security Council, due to which Dag Hammarskjöld became the accepted candidate to succeed Trygve Lie as second Secretary-General of the United Nations as ‘the unknown Swede’. It then summarizes his convictions, which were already internalized when he was a civil servant, as well as his loyalty to the values and principles of the UN Charter as a ‘secular bible’. Solidarity and universal humanity were among Hammarskjöld’s key notions and guided his ethics. It finally explains how Hammarskjöld defined the need of the international civil service as being independent from the individual influences and interests of UN Member States to act in neutrality to fully serve the defined principles of global governance as laid out in the UN Charter.