About

The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation is an autonomous organisation. We provide a forum for free and frank debate, stimulating Another Development for the future. The foundation does not give grants.

Our activities focus on United Nations-related issues. We promote the values of Dag Hammarskjöld, the second UN Secretary-General, within the current global development discourse.

The Foundation plays a catalysing role through seminars, publications and public events.

We build capacity on development, security, human rights  and democracy by making possible the meeting of minds.

We provide a platform for different experiences and perspectives to reach a wider audience, inspiring further dialogues.

While we have limited resources, we have been able to build up and draw on a large network of experts and practitioners in international institutions, governments, the academic community and, increasingly, civil society organisations and social movements.

To our seminars participants are invited in their personal capacity, thereby stimulating an open and creative exchange of views intended to achieve concrete results. Some seminars are conducted in an exploratory manner, while others are specifically focused on the formulation of detailed policy recommendations.

The Foundation is governed by an autonomous Board of Trustees, which has nine members. The Foundation’s Secretariat is located in a historic mansion in the heart of the academic town of Uppsala, where Dag Hammarskjöld spent most of his young life. It houses the secretariat and also provides the premises for most seminars organised in Sweden.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation was established in 1962 in memory of the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. According to the charter the broad purpose of the Foundation is to promote, in the spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld, social, political, economic, environmental and cultural development in the South and globally. The Foundation is an autonomous institution which carries out its own work programmes. It is not giving grants.