Why we disrupted Annalena Baerbock’s award speech

When, in late August, the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation announced that former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was its 2026 medallist, we were stunned. The cognitive dissonance was striking, even if we had become used to this after years of unabashed hypocrisy within the world’s most powerful institutions.

According to the foundation’s homepage , the medal is given to a person who “contributes to a more just, peaceful and environmentally sustainable world through valuable achievements in politics or research”. As this year’s medallist, Baerbock was invited to visit Uppsala University and deliver a lecture.

Here was an event claiming to celebrate “ compassion, humanism and commitment to international solidarity ” while honouring the foreign minister of a government that approved 94 million euros ($102m) in arms exports to Israel in the span of three months in 2024. The motivation provided for Baerbock’s selection as the 2026 Dag Hammarskjold medallist sounded like satire to us.