IPS journalist Fabíola Ortiz is the winner of one of four prestigious Dag Hammarskjöld fellowships to cover the United Nations in fall 2015.

The fellowship, named after the former U.N. Secretary-General, gives journalists from developing countries an opportunity to observe deliberations during the first 10 weeks of the U.N. General Assembly (September-November) in New York; and to expand their knowledge of foreign policy, diplomacy and world events.

This year is a crucial one for the international community, with the formulation of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and important conferences on financing for international development and climate change.

September’s summit will bring U.N. member states together at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to agree on a set of SDGs. If talks are productive and a document is agreed upon, the Goals will become into effect in January 2016.

Seventeen goals have been suggested, with a draft document presented at 2014’s General Assembly. Negotiations have continued in New York on how best to end poverty, achieve gender equality, conserve the environment and reduce inequality.

The fellowship is not supported financially by the United Nations itself, but will be supported by the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund, established in 1961 as a not-for-profit organisation by journalists at the United Nations to honor the second Secretary-General, who was killed in a plane crash while on a peace mission to Africa.

Ortiz is a Brazilian freelance journalist reporting in Portuguese, Spanish and English about human rights, international affairs and sustainable development. She has been a finalist twice for journalism awards for her reports on sustainable development in Brazil. She was also a contributor to the 2014 book “Until the Rulers Obey: Voices from Latin American Social Movements” edited by Marcy Rein and Clifton Ross.

Ortiz will be joined by Doreen Andoh, the Daily Graphic; Karthikeyan Hemalatha with Times of India; and Mercy Juma, with NTV and The Daily Nation of Kenya.

The selections were made following a review of approximately 130 applications from 40 countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America and Caribbean.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Experts investigating the 1961 plane crash that killed former Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld have submitted a report to the United Nations stating they have found significant new information which could indicate aerial attack or interference as a possible cause of the crash.

The panel of experts was tasked in March by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to examine evidence pertaining to the crash on Sept. 18, 1961, in which Hammarskjöld was one of 16 to die. The 56-year-old Swedish diplomat was en route to negotiate a cease-fire for the mining-rich Katanga province when his Douglas DC-6 airliner crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

The Panel described the new information as “having moderate probative value, sufficient to further pursue aerial attack or other interference as a hypothesis of the possible cause of the crash”. It will likely provoke another investigation.

The information included eyewitness accounts of more than one jet aircraft in the air at the time of the crash, and that Hammarskjöld’s plane was on fire before it hit the ground. There was also a possibility that communications sent from the CX-52 cryptographic machine used by Mr. Hammarskjöld were intercepted, the report stated.

The experts also found new information which upholds the original 1961 post-mortem examination of the 16 passengers on board SE-BDY.

The Panel, consisting of Mr. Mohamed Chande Othman of Tanzania, Ms. Kerryn Macaulay of Australia and Mr. Henrik Larsen of Denmark, also examined and assessed the value of new information relating to the various other hypotheses of the cause of the crash.

Theories relating to a possible hijacking or sabotage were found by the panel to have “nil or weak probative value”, yet new information was found relating to a hypothesis involving “crew fatigue”.

Investigations are likely to continue, with Ban Ki-moon remarking that “a further inquiry or investigation would be necessary to finally establish the facts.”

The Secretary-General is now reaching out to U.N. Member States to declassify and make available specific information, which may have been kept under wraps since the 1960s, relating to the event.

Several Member States, including the United Kingdom and the U.S., have withheld documents from the experts which could prove key in determining the cause of the crash. In a statement introducing the report, the Secretary-General noted that “there is a possibility that unreleased classified material relating to the crash of SE-BDY may still be available.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, on Monday, appointed an independent panel of experts to examine new information that has emerged from the investigation into the death of former U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. 

Ban designated the Chief Justice of the United Republic of Tanzania, Mohamed Chande Othman, as the head of the panel. The other panelists are Kerryn Macaulay, Australia’s Representative on the Council of the International Civil Aviation (ICAO), and Henrik Ejrup Larsen, a ballistics expert at the National Center of Forensic Services in the Danish National Police.

The panel is expected to assess the “probative value” of new information given to the secretary-general from the Hammarskjöld Commission, related to the plane crash, in which the ex-U.N. chief, and the party accompanying him, lost their lives.

In mid-March, Ban informed the General Assembly that the Hammarskjöld Commission had discovered “new evidence…relating to the conditions and circumstances” of the case.

The accident happened on the night of Sep. 17, 1961, in what is today Zambia.

Based on a General Assembly resolution adopted in December 2014, the panel will start its work on Mar. 30, 2015, and will report directly to the secretary-general Jun. 30, 2015.

All 193 member states have been encouraged to collaborate and release any relevant material relating to Hammarskjöld’s death.

Hammarskjöld, the second secretary-general of the U.N., served from 1953 until 1961. At the age of 47 he was nominated secretary-general, and remains the youngest man to have held the position. His plane crashed near the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo with Zambia, while he was on a mission to negotiate a ceasefire during the Katanga crisis.

Initially filed as a tragic plane accident, the United Nations is launching this investigation to clarify the doubts over the Swedish diplomat’s death.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin