Annual memorial service on 6 June 2024
This year’s Annual Memorial Service will be held on Thursday, 6 June 2024 and will honour United Nations personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty between 1 January 2023 and 31 December 2023. The Memorial Service will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 10.00 a.m. EST in the Trusteeship Council Chamber of the UN Secretariat and will be broadcast live on UN WebTV.
Serving the cause of peace in a violent world is a dangerous occupation. Since the founding of the United Nations, more than 4,300 brave men and women have lost their lives in its service.
Ole Bakke, a Norwegian serving in Palestine, was the first – gunned down in July 1948. Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, UN Mediator in Palestine, was the second – assassinated two months later.
The UN’s leadership was cut down in 1961, when Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, along with 15 others, died in a plane crash in the Congo while seeking peace.
Three decades later, the growing number and scale of UN peacekeeping missions put many more at risk. More lives were lost during the 1990s than in the previous 4 decades combined.
In the new millennium, the UN itself became a target: its premises attacked in Baghdad in 2003, Algiers in 2007, and Kabul in 2009.
Since the early 2000’s annual peacekeeper fatalities have consistently exceeded 100 per year.
“The greatest tribute we can pay to those who have died is to rededicate ourselves to continuing their work to build and maintain peace. They are the best of all of us and we must always pay tribute to their sacrifice that is a demonstration of the courage and generosity that the United Nations needs to present in today’s world.”
Secretary-General António Guterres
Remarks at the Wreath-laying Ceremony
honouring fallen Peacekeepers
24 May 2017
Natural disasters also claim the lives of those serving the UN. The Haiti earthquake in 2010 resulted in 102 deaths, the largest single loss in its history.
Here we remember those often forgotten – those who have died in the service of the United Nations – the fallen.