United Nations implications in war crimes

Interview with Count Hans-Christof von Sponeck

by Silvia Cattori
Swiss journalist

For Hans Christof von Sponeck, the former assistant secretary-general of the UN, the United Nations, far from garding the respect for international law and the consolidation of peace, have themselves become a factor of injustice. Thus, the sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq caused a human disaster, whereas treaties such as the nuclear non-proliferation treaty are used to ensure the domination of certain powers and to threaten others. It is time to change the system completely.


Count Hans-Christof von Sponeck, born in Bremen in 1939, has been working for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for 32 years. Appointed by Kofi Annan in 1998 as United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, with the status of UN Assistant to the Secretary General, Mr. von Sponeck resigned in March 2000 in protest against the sanctions, which had led the Iraqi people to misery and starvation. It is with sorrow and bitterness that he speakes about the sufferings endured by the Iraqis, a people he knew well and learned to love, and he appeals to the political leaders responsible for the catastrophe in a moving interview he gave to Silvia Cattori.

Silvia Cattori: In your book ”A Different War: The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq”, [1] you denounced openly the fact that the Security Council betrayed the principles of the UN Charter. Could you give us specific examples where the UN Secretariat behaved in an especially condemnable way?

Hans von Sponeck: The Security Council must follow the UN Charter and it must not forget the Convention on the rights of the child and the general implications of these conventions. Moreover, if the Security Council knows that conditions in Iraq are inhuman - people of all ages have been in deep trouble, not because of a dictator, but because of the policies around the ’oil for food programme’ - and it decides not to act, or not to do enough to protect the people against the impact of its policy, then one can argue very easily that the Security Council is to be blamed, for the very strong increase in the mortality rates in Iraq. A definite example is that during the 1980s, under the government of Saddam Hussein, UNICEF identified 25 children per thousand under the age five years of age that were dying in Iraq for various reasons. During the years of sanctions, from 1990 to 2003, there was a sharp increase from 56 per thousand children under five years of age in the early 1990s to 131 per thousand under five years of age at the beginning of the new century. Now everyone can easily understand that this was due to the economic sanctions, so it is out of the question that the Security Council preferred to ignore the consequences of its policies in Iraq under the pressure excercised by the major intervening parties including, and in particular, the United States and Great Britain.

Silvia Cattori: Our political leaders, who are present in all international bodies, knew perfectly well that these sanctions would have disastrous consequences. Does that mean that, by remaining silent, they have accepted innocent civilians to be killed, tortured, and starved?

Hans von Sponeck: I would say, unless the international community has a very bad memory, we cannot forget that, either there was silence or there was connivance, support, or there was a deliberate effort to promote conditions of the kind that prevailed in Iraq during thirteen years of sanctions. Therefore, you get different levels of accountability, of political accountability. Not only the Prime Minister of Great Britain and the President of the United States and their governments are responsible, but others as well; Spain and Italy played a supportive role that means the former governments are responsible as well. Mr Aznar in Madrid and Mr Berlusconi in Italy are very much responsible for having contributed to the humanitarian disaster that evolved in Iraq. They will not accept this responsibility but the evidence is there.

Silvia Cattori: How did you react to the execution of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants, sentenced to death by a tribunal established by the USA?

Hans von Sponeck: I would say, first of all, that I was not surprised. This was the ultimate objective of those in power in Baghdad and of those who occupy Iraq. It is impossible to defend Saddam Hussein, but we can respond to the fact that there was no due process, but a masquerade. It was a tribunal that hid a prearranged death sentence under the cover of respectability. Saddam Hussein, like any other person, deserved the right to a fair trial, but he was not given a fair trial. And therefore I was upset by this obvious act, although we have international law, despite the fact that the European nations, the US and Canada as well as other western nations repeatedly express their intention to maintain justice, that they in fact did not protect justice.

Silvia Cattori: You wrote to President Bush and asked him to free Tarek Aziz. Did you get an answer?

Hans von Sponeck: I did not get an answer. I wrote this letter because I know Mr Tarek Aziz. My predecessor and I both think he is a person with whom we had a correct relationship, a person who – despite what we read in the mainstream media – tried to look to the Iraqi people. He was ready and willing to consider proposals for the improvement of the humanitarian aid programme. From our perspective, from my perspective, he was a correct person. I cannot judge what Mr Tarek Aziz did in Iraq outside my fields of responsibility, but all I want to ask for is that a person, who is ill, if for no other than humanitarian reasons, should be treated with dignity, should be allowed to obtain medical care while having a fair trial. Just like Saddam Hussein, Tarek Aziz deserved, and deserves, to be treated in accordance with international law, in accordance with The Hague and the Geneva Conventions. I object to the fact that over three years after he voluntarily turned himself in to the occupation forces, he has not even been charged, and still remains in custody while he is badly in need of medical care. More on Voltairenet.org