Dag Hammarskjold Un Quotes

Former UN secretary-general Dag Hammarskjold may have best summed up the UN's track record and its promise when he said it was created 'not to lead mankind to heaven but to save humanity from hell'" (p. 348).

Peacekeeping is a soldier-intensive business in which the quality of troops matters as much as the quantity. It is not just soldiering under a different color helmet; it differs in kind from anything else soldiers do. The are medals and rewards (mainly, the satisfaction of saving lives), but there are also casualties. And no victories. It is not a risk -free enterprise. In Bosnia, mines, snipers, mountainous terrain, extreme weather conditions, and possible civil disturbances were major threats that had to be dealt with from the outset of the operation. Dag Hammarskjold once remarked, "Peacekeeping is a job not suited to soldiers, but a job only soldiers can do." Humanitarianism conflicts with peacekeeping and still more with peace enforcement. The threat of force, if it is to be effective, will sooner or later involve the use of force. For example, the same UN soldiers in Bosnia under a different command and mandate essentially turned belligerence into compliance over night, demonstrating that a credible threat of force can yield results. Unlike, UNPROFOR, the NATO-led Implementation Force was a military success and helped bring stability to the region and to provide an "environment of hope" in which a nation can be reborn. It is now up to a complex array of international civil agencies to assist in putting in place lasting structures for democratic government and the will of the international community to ensure a lasting peace.

The United Nations relies on factuality—and steady ideals—to progress. “No institution,” he once observed, “can become effective unless it is forced to wrestle with the problems, the conflicts, and the tribulations of real life.”5 For this reason, he didn’t mind the clash of ideas and agendas at UN meetings large and small. On the contrary, he welcomed substantive debate and the often awkward search for solutions. “I feel that what very many people call negative sides—the talking, the conflicts, the flux of events, the uncertainties about outcomes and so on and so forth—are not negative sides but positive sides.”6 Obstacles and delays were to be expected: “Setbacks in efforts to implement an ideal do not prove that the ideal is wrong…. At the beginning of great changes in human society there must always be a stage of…frailty or seeming inconsistency.”7

Nunca niegues tu propia experiencia y convicciones por mantener la paz y la calma. —Dag Hammarskjold,