Hans-Christof Graf von Sponeck has had a long and illustrious career in the United Nation specializing in development issues. He is the recipient of many humanitarian awards, including the Church of England’s Peace Prize, the 2000 Arab/American Anti-Discrimination Committee Humanitarian Award for “courage and integrity”, and the 2003 Bremen Peace Award of the Threshold Foundation from his native Germany. He is the author of Irak: Chronik eines gewollten Krieges (Iraq: Chronicle of an Intended War, 2003) and Human Development: Is There an Alternative? (1997), as well as numerous articles on the environment, social change, development, sanctions and humanitarian exemptions.
Hans-Christof Graf von Sponeck
Until 2000, Hans-Christof Graf von Sponeck was the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid for Iraq. As head of the Oil-for-Food program, he was responsible for all UN activity in that country until he resigned in March 2000 in protest over the UN Security Council's Iraq policy. A former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Graf von Sponeck argued that the price of the economic sanctions against Iraq was paid by the most vulnerable of Iraqi civilians. In this talk he discusses the lessons we should learn from the Iraq War, especially the difference between human security and military security.