Press invitation: Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture with Christiana Figueres and Agnès Callamard

On 17 September 2021, the annual Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture will take place at Uppsala University’s Aula Magna. This year’s event features both the 2021 Lecture by Dr. Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International, and the 2019 Lecture by Christiana Figueres, chief architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which was previously postposed. Journalists and representatives of the press are invited to register for the event.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture is an annual event held in memory of Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), and the values that inspired him, namely compassion, humanism, and commitment to international solidarity and cooperation. 17 September 2021 marks the 60th anniversary of the plane crash in Ndola, Zambia which took the lives of Hammarskjöld and the fifteen others travelling with him. The annual event has been co-hosted by Uppsala University and the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation since 1998.

The 2021 Dag Hammarskjöld Lecturer, Agnès Callamard, serves as Secretary General of Amnesty International. Prior to assuming this role, she was the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions appointed by the UN Human Rights Council (2016 – 2021). Callamard previously served as Director of Global Freedom of Expression at Columbia University and Executive Director of the freedom of expression organisation Article 19, among other roles. The title of her lecture is, ‘A Global Compact for a World Beyond COVID’.

The 2019 Dag Hammarskjöld Lecturer, Christiana Figueres, will deliver her long-awaited talk, ‘Leadership for the Decisive Decade,’ remotely via video link. During her time as Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2010 – 2016), Figueres brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations, activists, financial institutions, scientists, spiritual communities, and NGOs to jointly deliver the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Since then, Figueres has continued to foster climate change action, including through the work of Global Optimism, where she is a Founding Partner. She sits on the boards of ACCIONA and Impossible Foods.

After having delivered their respective lectures, the two speakers will engage in a moderated discussion on the theme of global cooperation. Due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, the number of in-person participants will be limited. The event will be live streamed from 14:00 – 16:30 Central European Time via this link: uu.se/en/the-dag-hammarskjold-lecture-2021

A brief memorial ceremony will be held at Dag Hammarskjöld’s grave just prior to the lecture.

Members of the press who would like to attend any part of the event in-person must register in advance with Uppsala University’s press office (press@uu.se, + 46 (0)70-167 92 96) and must arrive at the Aula promptly at 13:45 to be admitted.