Denis Halliday.

• Author: ROTHSCHILD, MATTHEW
• Position: Former United Nations employee resigned over Iraq sanctions - Interview

You probably have heard of Scott Ritter, the UNSCOM weapons inspector (and former U.S. Marine) who resigned his post last August to protest what he saw as the failure of the United States to act more forcefully against Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But you may not have heard of Denis Halliday, who resigned his post as head of the United Nations' Oil for Food program in Iraq just weeks later to protest the humanitarian costs of the U.N. sanctions.

"Four thousand to 5,000 children are dying unnecessarily every month due to the impact of sanctions," he said. "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral."

Halliday, an Irishman, worked for the United Nations for thirty-four years. A specialist in Third World development issues, he was stationed in Iran, Malaysia, and Indonesia, as well as at U.N. headquarters in New York. On September 1, 1997, he was appointed U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. He resigned thirteen months later.

I interviewed him on my radio program, Second Opinion, when he came through Madison, Wisconsin, on December 5. And I spoke with him again on the phone later in the month after the United States and Britain bombed Iraq.

Q: Why did you decide to resign from the United Nations?

Denis Halliday: I found myself in the very uncomfortable position of representing the United Nations, which in Iraq has two faces. One is the face of the military inspections supported by sanctions, which are killing thousands of Iraqis every month and sustaining malnutrition at the rate of 30 percent for children alone. At the same time, I'm trying to run a humanitarian assistance program, and I find these two functions incompatible. I don't believe the Security Council has the right to punish the people of Iraq simply because it is unhappy with the president of the country.

Q: You have said that the sanctions policy is a breach of international law. How?

Halliday: It's a complete breach of the Convention of the Rights of the Child, for example. It's a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It undermines the very charter of the United Nations itself. The preamble of the charter is being clobbered by these U.N. sanctions: the right of individuals to have a life, liberty, opportunities to live, work, and so on. It's very fundamental stuff.

Q: What is the magnitude of the suffering in Iraq? I've seen a lot of numbers. I saw one U.N. study that said 500,000 Iraqi children had died--this was several years back--as the result of sanctions.

Halliday: I believe the 500,000 is a UNICEF figure. It's probably closer now to 600,000 and that's over the period of 1990-1998. If you include adults, it's well over one million Iraqi people.

Q: What caused these deaths? What is the chain of fatality?

Halliday: It originates with the horrendous and comprehensive damage done by the missiles and bombing of the coalition forces during the Gulf War period, which was of greater extent than any of us understand. They set about demolishing the civilian infrastructure of this country, including the water supplies, sewage supply systems, electric power systems, the production systems, educational facilities, places of work. It's hard to visualize, perhaps, but the infrastructure that supports a good standard of living has been demolished. So that's the starting point. And then you have the sanctions now for seven or eight years, and the damage that was done, combined with the lack of money, or spare parts, upkeep for maintenance in the agricultural sector. This combined has got us in the situation now where we have poor nutritional intake, we have very poor health services, lack of drugs and medicines, and we have a disastrous water/sewage situation whereby water-borne diseases like typhus are killing...