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From No. 3, Vol. XLVIII, ¡°The Digital Dividend¡±, 2011

In his last years before his untimely death in Africa half a century ago, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskj?ld challenged the colonial powers¡¯ continued attempts to quell the quest for freedom that was sweeping the continent, and openly criticized those who tried to make ¡°the Congo a happy hunting ground for [their own] national interests.¡±¹ He expressed his frustration over ¡°many member Nations [which] have not yet accepted the very limits put on their national ambitions by the very existence of the United Nations and by the membership of that Organization.¡±²

Thus, Hammarskj?ld gained enemies. Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev¡¯s demand for his resignation is well known. The United States Government wanted a more cooperative man at the helm of the UN. Less well known is French President Charles de Gaulle¡¯s humiliation of the Secretary-General by turning down his invitation when de Gaulle came to New York. On 15 February 1961, there were riots in the UN building that physically threatened him. Even small nations, like Ghana, turned against him after Congo¡¯s first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba¡¯s gory death. However, none of this stopped him from going to the Congo that fateful day in September 1961.

That Africa should become Hammarskj?ld¡¯s final destination was symbolic of his days in the UN. The earth that eventually soiled his face as his plane crashed was in the land where Patrice Lumumba was humiliated and executed only months before, where Western multinationals had sent mercenaries in search of minerals and to gain geopolitical control for years, and where King Leopold¡¯s ¡°humanitarian¡± endeavours had taken more than ten million lives. For another 50 years, Africa would continue to see unimaginable bloodshed and suffering, from Egypt to Sudan, Somalia, Western Sahara, Congo and South Africa.

Hammarskj?ld seemed to know what was awaiting him that day in September 1961. When he was only 20 years old, he had crafted a sentence that he later chose as the introduction to his diary: ¡°Death shall thrust its sword into an alert man!¡±

Forty years after Hammarskj?ld¡¯s³ death, United States Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney summed up ¡°the misconduct of Western nations in Africa¡± at a House of Representatives hearing. She claimed that it was ¡°not due to momentary lapses, individual defects, or errors of common human frailty ¡­[but was]¡­ part of long-term policy design to access and plunder Africa¡¯s wealth at the expense of its people.¡± Hammarskj?ld¡¯s warning about Africa being turned into a ¡°happy hunting ground¡± has sadly been proven right. But where McKinney only saw US fingerprints, others have pointed to the international organizations and instruments which have served as tools for ¡°Western plunder.¡±

In the mid-1950s, Hammarskj?ld saw the formation of a larger and more dangerous ¡°policy design¡±, to use McKinney¡¯s expression, with the creation of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Hammarskj?ld had served at the Organization for European Economic Development (OEED) and witnessed its transformation into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). As head of the UN, he soon became the small countries¡¯ spokesperson, and protested when the OECD sought to shape the development agenda in the former colonies through the DAC.

That oppressive recent colonial powers¡ªwhich had carved up the African continent as the spoils of the Berlin Congress only 75 years earlier and only reluctantly gave in to liberation¡¯s ¡°wind of change¡±⁴¡ªshould now claim to be the saviours of the Third World, was bad news to Hammarskj?ld. As he saw it, responsibility for the developing world belonged with the UN itself. Only the UN had the credibility to assist newly emerging countries in their development and nation building.

For Hammarskj?ld, the OECD¡¯s DAC was a threat to the UN itself. After 50 years, the record of the OECD-DAC⁵ has shown that Hammarskj?ld was right. While the rest of the world has seen leaps in material accumulation, life expectancy and welfare, Africa ¡ª subject to DAC leadership and its close proximity to the IMF and the World Bank¡ªhas seen structural adjustment policies and coordinated aid programmes that have done everything but address the root causes of poverty and underdevelopment. Rather, the OECD and DAC have ensured a development agenda that has resulted in the largest gap between rich and poor countries that history has ever witnessed. Hammarskj?ld wanted considerable funds to be transferred annually to the developing world. But as DAC and the rich nations have refused to transfer power to the UN in any significant way, Hammarskj?ld would not be surprised to hear that wealth today is in the hands of the rich world to a degree unimaginable even in 1961.

Hammarskj?ld feared what Bruce de Mesquita⁶ documented fifty years later: Western democracies would not come to promote democracies in the South, but would establish and prop up reliable partners who best serve their needs. And dictators were often more stable and manageable than democracies. Says Mesquita,⁷ ¡°The rich democracies¡¯ support to these dictatorships is called ¡°development aid¡±.

Superficially, everyone shared the view that the exploitation of colonies had to come to an end with decolonization. But Hammarskj?ld also strongly demanded substantive support for the developing nations that had been vandalized by years of colonial abuse and exploitation. He demanded their fair and balanced integration into the world economy. As a fellowship of all nations, the UN was to hold the reins for this.

Fifty years after Dag Hammarskj?ld¡¯s untimely demise, the West has failed to let the UN become the tool for development that he dreamed of. We have ignored his warnings. Hammarskj?ld feared that splitting the UN into many specialized agencies would weaken the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council. We have weakened the UN, not only by splitting it up and under financing it, but also by channelling attention, resources, and authority away from the world organization to the ostensibly more ¡°effective¡± Bretton Woods institutions that the rich countries control. It should come as no surprise that the Millennium Development Goals were not concocted at the UN, but in the halls of the OECD by the DAC.

Instead of the UN, private operations and initiatives like those of Ted Turner and Bill Gates as well as the G8 summit, among others, that serve the West¡¯s interests, are now setting the international development agenda. World leaders fill the hotels in Davos, or at G8 and G20 summits, rather than the halls of the UN. We have systematically hindered poor nations from taking control of their own development.

Even more distressing is the fact that we have kept Africa from turning its resources into wealth, from industrializing, and from progress. We have kept our expensive medicines to ourselves through high prices and patents. We have short-changed Africa by dispatching mosquito bed nets and microfinance from five-star hotels. In short: We have kept Africa poor, effectively blocked their efforts to get out of poverty, and made them dependent on us for their own survival. Of course, not only will DAC members have to take responsibility for this, but also non-governmental organizations and private businesses.

Dag Hammarskj?ld was ¡°greatly impressed by the new generation of African leaders¡±⁸ of his day, and had high hopes for ¡°the economic potentialities of Africa¡±.⁹ Fifty years later, there are no signs of significant new developmental resources for Africa. The hope again is that a ¡°new¡± generation will emancipate the continent. Freedom and prosperity must come to Africa from within. Let us pray that it will not resort to quick fixes, revenge, violence, and wars that have kept it down for so many years. And that a reformed UN will, once again, start speaking for the small countries and keep the powerful ones accountable for signing the Charter, as Hammarskj?ld dreamed too many years ago.

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Notes

1. Urquhart, Brian, Hammarskj?ld, Norton, 1974, p. 507.
2. Ibid., p. 508.
3. Presentation to the US House Committee on International Relations, Suffering and Despair: Humanitarian Crisis in the Congo: Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, 107th Congress, 17 May 2001.
4. After Hammarskjold had visited 24 African countries, Britain¡¯s Harold Macmillan toured the continent in 1960, helping prepare British allies for the by then inevitable independence of the colonies, and coining the expression ¡°a wind of change¡±.
5. All 25 DAC member countries are industrialized countries.
6. Bruce de Mesquita. The Dictator¡¯s Handbook (forthcoming).
7. In a BBC interview on 30 July 2011.
8. Urquhart, Brian. Hammarskj?ld, Norton, 1994, p. 381.
9. SG/890 26 January 1960.