Volume 15 (2011) of the Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law commemorates Dag Hammarskjöld – the 2nd and until today most prominent Secretary-General of the United Nations – who died in office on 18 September 1961, being underway in Africa, to negotiate peace. Carl Bildt stated that “Hammarskjöld’s view that the United Nations embodied the ‘edge of development of human society’ and worked on the ‘brink of the unknown’ remains an inspiring vision.” And he is correct in saying “that the United Nations will still be the main forum for the international dialogue.”
Volume 15 reflects this “international dialogue” with eleven articles from scholars and professors from Australia, Belarus, France, Denmark, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom. It deals with, inter alia, internationalized constitutionalism in ethnically divided societies; the question whether paying ransom to pirates is a humanitarian necessity or a financing of Jihadists; the role of physicians in armed conflicts being reflected in the laws of war; Human Rights Principles and the Human Right to Water and Sanitation; as well as questions surrounding the actual restructuring of the Global Financial System.