3 journalists awarded Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Scholarships

The United Nations Correspondent’s Association today awarded scholarships memorialzing Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s second Secretary-General, to three journalists from the developing world.

Since 1961, when the Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Scholarship Fund was established, young, working journalists from Africa, Asia and Latin America have been brought to New York to observe and report to their news organizations on the UN General Assembly, and also to improve their professional skills.

In his remarks to a luncheon honouring the scholars, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan encouraged the journalists to concentrate not only on the General Assembly or the Security Council but also the economic and social issues in which the UN is engaged.

“I hope that your stay here will get you to focus attention on issues of extreme importance to us – peace and security, the fight against extreme poverty, the fight against injustice and exclusion, which everybody now accepts as some sort of breeding ground for extremists,” he said.

For his part, actor Danny Glover, a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told the audience that with numerous problems facing the world, each individual had a responsibility to do his or her part to make a difference.

“We are aware of the relationship between poverty, HIV/AIDS, destabilization and security, and yet now we stand at the door of an even greater conflict, and potentially the dangerous repercussions of an even greater destabilization and uncertainty in the world,” he said. “Right now, everyone of us must step forward for our children and those yet unborn to promote peace and dialogue and reconciliation.”