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Madeleine Herren-Oesch Moderates Event at the UN Library Geneva

United Nations at Geneva

The Palais des Nations, the main building of the United Nations Office at Geneva (Photo: Pxfuel | CC0).

“Shaping Multilateralism through the International Civil Service: from Eric Drummond to Dag Hammarskjöld” was an event at the UN Library Geneva, which took place on April 16, 2019, and was moderated by Madeleine Herren-Oesch.

100 years after the establishment of the League of Nations, the international civil service has thrived into an independent impartial body, which today provides a bond holding the multilateral system together. The first Secretary-General of the League of Nations, Eric Drummond, and the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld, both shaped multilateralism through their visions for the organizations.

The participants of the panel discussion include John Burley former Director of the Services Infrastructure and Trade Efficiency Division at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Blandine Blukacz-Louisfert Chief, Institutional Memory Section at the United Nations Library Geneva, and Henning Melber, Senior Advisor and Director Emeritus of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. They discussed the two great diplomats, their common understanding of the international civil service and the political realities that their ambitions were confronted with and explored the continuous challenges of the Secretariat’s work.

Madeleine Herren-Oesch moderated the panel discussion. She is Professor of Modern History and the Director of the Institute for European Global Studies. While her fields of expertise cover 19th and 20th century history, her historiographical approach examines history through its strong connections to the contemporary world in its multilayered, global dimensions.

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