UN’s Francis Deng to give this year’s Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture

This year’s Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture will be given by Dr. Francis M. Deng, UN Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide. Dr. Deng previously served as the Sudan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and its ambassador to Sweden and the U.S., among other countries. Members of the media are welcome to attend the lecture, which will be held at the University Main Building on 10 September.

Dr. Francis M. Deng received his appointment as Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Prior to receiving this appointment Dr. Deng served, from 2006 to 2007, as Director of the Sudan Peace Support Project based at the United States Institute of Peace. He has also served as the Sudan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and its ambassador to Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the U.S. He has acted in a variety of UN capacities and been a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a guest professor of international politics, law and society at Johns Hopkins University. He has written a number of books within the field of human rights.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture is a recurring arrangement instituted in 1998 in memory of Dag Hammarskjöld, the second UN Secretary-General, in recognition of the values that he stood for: involvement, humanism and international solidarity and cooperation. The lecture is intended to honour the spirit of Dag Hammarskjöld by emphasising and reinforcing the value of international solidarity and cooperation and providing inspiration to people working with such issues as well as those, especially among the younger generations, who are considering such a commitment.

The lecture, which will be open to the public, will be followed by a question and answer period and a performance by the Allmänna Sången choir.

Time and place: Grand Auditorium, Uppsala University, 10 September 2009 at 5:15 p.m.
Please note that you should be in your seat by 5:00 p.m.

Francis M. Deng will also participate in a ceremony to be held at 4:30 p.m. on the same day at Dag Hammarskjöld’s grave in the Uppsala old cemetery,

Read more about Francis M. Deng at the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation website, where a video of the lecture will be posted after the fact.

An interview with Dr. Francis M. Deng is available at http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/10411/a/103424

For more information, please contact Mattias Lasson, coordinator, the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, by calling +46-18-410 10 06 or +46-076-541 10 06 or sending an email to mattias.lasson@dhf.uu.se