Denis Halliday on Iraq

Late last year, Denis Halliday, Chief U.N. Relief Coordinator for Iraq
resigned from his post to protest the devastating effects economic
sanctions were having on the population of Iraq. He is currently on a
tour of the United States, trying to raise awareness of the
humanitarian cost of the sanctions.

Mr. Halliday spent over 30 years with the U.N, where he became Assistant
Secretary General. He was appointed Humanitarian Coordinator for
Iraq on September 1, 1997. He quit after thirteen months, after realizing
that the U.N in Iraq had "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 thirty percent for children alone". At the same time, he was
trying to run a humanitarian assistance program. "I find these two
functions incompatible," he says. "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".

The scale of the damage done by the sanctions is staggering. A UNICEF
study has found that 5000 to 6000 young children die every month as a direct
result of sanctions. Including adults, over a million civilians have
died since the war, of malnutrition, starvation, and easily
preventable, treatable diseases such as pneumonia, cholera, bacterial
staph and strep infections and dehydration. Sanctions mean that the
country's basic infrastructure, such as water, sewage, electrical,
irrigation and medical facilities which were destroyed during the war
cannot be repaired or maintained. This has led to a situation 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
thousands of Iraqis, particularly children", says Halliday. "Doctors
are making horrible decisions as to who dies, who lives".

Mr. Halliday is currently touring the United States, trying to raise awareness amongst the U.S. public. He is currently in the San Francisco Bay area, where he will be speaking at a number of venues over the next few days, and will go on to other American cities. The American public is, largely unconsciously, partly repsonsible for the humanitarian disaster in Iraq through their silent assent. Take your friends, and have them listen to the real costs of economic sanctions against Iraq from this distinguished and credible diplomat.