A-Infos (en) Sanctions 'have hurt people', not leaders

[Platformist Anarchism <platform@geocities.com>]

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UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq admits that 
sanctions are killing Iraqi children.  The UN's 
role as chief tormentor of the Iraqi people 
"seemed to be inconsistent with our purpose, with 
the human rights provision of our charter.".

Sanctions 'have hurt people', not leaders
from 'The Irish Times'

Lara Marlowe talks to Denis Halliday, an Irishman 
who is the United Nations Humanitarian 
Coordinator for Iraq

Iraq: Mr Denis Halliday (57), the Irish UN 
Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq, has seen many 
tragic cases since arriving in Baghdad last 
September, but four children on the leukaemia 
ward of Saddam Hussein City Hospital particularly 
touched him.

With the help of a colleague at the World Health 
Organisation, he managed to obtain medicine for 
them from Jordan and Turkey.

"You can't get involved with people in their 
thousands," Mr Halliday says. "But I got involved 
with those four kids. His Indonesian wife, Lena, 
and 14-year-old daughter, Fransisca, are in New 
York, so he was alone for the holidays. "I went 
over to the hospital on Christmas Eve, to see how 
the children were doing. I brought gifts for 
them. Two of them were dead already."

Conditions in Iraqi hospitals are appalling, 
mainly because the oil-for-food programme which 
Mr Halliday administers - and which Iraq 
considers a national humiliation - doesn't 
generate enough money. Since the end of 1996, 
Iraq has been allowed to sell $2 billion of oil 
every six months. Thirty per cent of the proceeds 
are reserved for compensation owed by Iraq to 
individuals, companies and countries for its 
invasion of Kuwait.

By the time more money is deducted for UN 
operations in Iraq, only $900 million is left for 
food and medicine - $78 per Iraqi per year. "It's 
very small money," Mr Halliday admits.

Until Mrs Mary Robinson became the UN High 
Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr Halliday was 
the most senior Irish person at the UN. So when 
he wrote a private letter to the secretary 
general last November, Mr Kofi Annan paid 
attention. "I found myself in a moral dilemma," 
Mr Halliday says. The UN's role as chief 
tormentor of the Iraqi people "seemed to be 
inconsistent with our purpose, with the human 
rights provision of our charter. It undermined 
the moral credibility of the UN".

Mr Halliday originated the idea of doubling the 
amount of oil that Iraq could sell to buy food 
and medicine. "I started selling the idea to the 
Russian, French and Chinese ambassadors here. We 
gave them malnutrition data. It was used very 
effectively in their capitals." Mr Halliday's 
efforts led to the Security Council's February 
20th decision to allow Iraq to double its oil 
exports. "The fact that this was accomplished 
makes my conscience a bit easier," Mr Halliday 
says.

The malnutrition data Mr Halliday refers to is 
chilling. According to UNICEF studies, one 
quarter of all Iraqi children under the age of 
six - one million children - are malnourished. In 
12 per cent of cases, chronic malnutrition is 
leading to stunted growth, high school drop-out 
rates and reduced attention spans. "What makes 
this particularly tragic is that this country had 
a very high standard of living at the end of the 
1980s," Mr Halliday says. "They had excellent 
education; their health system was a model that 
people came to study. What you see today is a 
horrible contrast."

Mr Halliday's Iraqi experience has convinced him 
that economic sanctions do more harm than good. 
To ensure political loyalty, the Iraqi regime had 
set up a centralised welfare system under which 
Iraqis rely on the government for food and 
clothing. "They created a dependency factor that 
has been strengthened by sanctions. The sanctions 
have not affected the leadership. They have hurt 
the people. When people are hungry they are not 
interested in government, democracy, changing the 
system - they are interested in survival.

"The international community has got to find some 
alternative means to sanctions," he continues. 
"We are always going to have problem countries. 
We need to find a way not to enhance the 
leadership through sanctions - as we are doing in 
Iraq. The system of pressure has to be redesigned 
and rethought out."

Perhaps it is his Quaker faith, he says, that 
makes him believe stopping arms sales would go a 
long way towards solving the problem. Had the 
West not sold President Saddam Hussein billions 
of dollars worth of weapons, Iraq would not be in 
the condition it is in today.

Mr Halliday's parents were Irish Quakers "for at 
least 150 years on both sides". An uncle, Senator 
James Douglas, ensured a phrase on minority 
rights was included in the 1937 Irish 
Constitution. Mr Halliday was born in what is now 
the Department of Foreign Affairs, and attended 
school in Harcourt Street before studying 
economics and public administration with 
Professor F.S.L. Lyons at Trinity.

His mother and father were founding members of 
the Foreign Students Society in Dublin in the 
1930s. "I grew up with Indians and Chinese. 
Quakers travel a lot and like to stay with each 
other. I always had a sense that Ireland was 
small and I wanted to go out and see the world. 
It was on my mind from the beginning."

So off he went, to Kenya as a Quaker missionary 
in 1962, joining the UN in Iran in 1964. When Mrs 
Robinson joined the UN last year, Mr Halliday 
gave her a few tips about the system. "For 
Ireland to have an under secretary general [Mrs 
Robinson's rank] and an assistant secretary 
general [his rank] is quite amazing," he says.

The present secretary general, Mr Annan, held Mr 
Halliday's former post as head of human resources 
at the UN before his appointment to the world 
body's highest position. The two men have known 
one another for 20 years, and Mr Halliday briefed 
Mr Annan on the oil-for-food programme before the 
secretary general's weekend meeting with the 
Iraqi vice-president.

Had Mr Annan not defused the crisis between the 
US and Iraq, Mr Halliday was poised to evacuate 
all but a handful of his 300 international staff 
- and stay on himself through the bombardment.

His greatest ambition now, Mr Halliday says, is 
to work for an Irish NGO, become an Irish 
ambassador or retire to Galway and study Irish 
archaeology and anthropology at UCG.

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