Denis J. Halliday (born c.1941) is an Irish diplomat. He was the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

Humanitarian Coordinator The Humanitarian Coordinator is the senior-most United Nations official in a country experiencing a humanitarian emergency. The Humanitarian Coordinator is appointed by the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emerg ...

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

from 1 September 1997 until 1998, and earlier the Deputy Resident Representative to Singapore of the United Nations Development Programme. Graduated from

Trinity College, Dublin Trinity College Dublin (), officially titled The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, and legally incorporated as Trinity College, the University of Dublin (TCD), is the sole constituent college of the Univ ...

, with a MA in Economics, Geography and Public Administration; Halliday spent a year in Kenya as a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers ...

volunteer Volunteering is an elective and freely chosen act of an individual or group giving their time and labor, often for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergency ...

from 1962 to 1963, before joining United Nations in 1964. His first posting was in

Tehran Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...

as a junior professional officer in the United Nations Technical Assistance Board and Special Fund. From 1966 to 1972, he served in the Asian Bureau of the UNDP Headquarters in New York and then in Malaysia from 1972 to 1977 as Deputy Regional Representative. Moving to Indonesia, he continued as Deputy Regional Representative until 1979, when he moved to Samoa as Resident Representative covering Samoa, the Cook Islands, the Tokelau Islands and Niue in the South Pacific. Returning to New York in 1981, he served in the Asia and Pacific Bureau and in 1985 became the Deputy Director, Division of Personnel and Chef de Cabinet in 1987. In 1985, he took up the post of Deputy Director, Division of Personnel before becoming Chef de Cabinet, Office of the Administrator of the UNDP from 1987 to 1989. He served as the Director, Division of Personnel of the UNDP from 1989 to 1994. He then served briefly as UNDP Regional Representative in Thailand, before taking up the post of Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management of the United Nations, based in its New York Headquarters, serving from 1994 to 1997, when he was appointed United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. After a 34-year career at the United Nations, where he had reached Assistant Secretary-General level, Halliday resigned in 1998, over the

sanctions against Iraq A sanction may be either a permission or a restriction, depending upon context, as the word is an auto-antonym. Examples of sanctions include: Government and law * Sanctions (law), penalties imposed by courts * Economic sanctions, typically a b ...

, characterizing them as "

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

". He subsequently gave the following explanation of his decision to resign:

I often have to explain why I resigned from the United Nations after a 30-year career, why I took on the all-powerful states of the
UN Security Council The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international peace and security, recommending the admission of new UN members to the General Assembly, an ...
; and why after five years I continue to serve the well being of the people of Iraq. In reality, there was no choice, and there remains no choice. You all would have done the same had you been occupying my seat as head of the UN Humanitarian Program in Iraq.

I was driven to resignation because I refused to continue to take Security Council orders, the same Security Council that had imposed and sustained genocidal sanctions on the innocent of Iraq. I did not want to be complicit. I wanted to be free to speak out publicly about this crime.

Above all, my innate sense of justice was and still is outraged by the violence that UN sanctions have brought upon, and continue to bring upon, the lives of children, families – the extended families, and the loved ones of Iraq. There is no justification for killing the young people of Iraq, not the aged, not the sick, not the rich, not the poor.

Some will tell you that the leadership is punishing the Iraqi people. That is not my perception, or experience from living in Baghdad. And were that to be the case – how can that possibly justify further punishment, in fact
collective punishment Collective punishment is a punishment or sanction imposed on a group or whole community for acts allegedly perpetrated by a member or some members of that group or area, which could be an ethnic or political group, or just the family, friends a ...
, by the United Nations? I don't think so. And international law has no provision for the disproportionate and murderous consequences of the ongoing UN
embargo Economic sanctions or embargoes are commercial and financial penalties applied by states or institutions against states, groups, or individuals. Economic sanctions are a form of coercion that attempts to get an actor to change its behavior throu ...
– for well over 12 long years.

In 2003 Halliday was presented with the

Gandhi International Peace Award The Gandhi Foundation is a United Kingdom-based voluntary organisation which seeks to further the work of Mahatma Gandhi through a variety of educational events and activities. Aims and activities As part of its mission, the Gandhi Foundation ...

in recognition of his work drawing attention to the plight of Iraqis. In 2007, he presented the same award to the website

Media Lens Media Lens is a British media analysis website established in 2001 by David Cromwell and David Edwards. Cromwell and Edwards are the site's editors and only regular contributors. Their aim is to scrutinise and question the mainstream media's ...

, whose co-founder David Edwards had interviewed Halliday in May 2000 about his work in Iraq. In 2009 Denis Halliday agreed to become a Patron of the

Gandhi Foundation The Gandhi Foundation is a United Kingdom-based voluntary organisation which seeks to further the work of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi through a variety of educational events and activities. Aims and activities As part of its mis ...

, and he presented the annual peace award to the Children's Legal Centre. On 25 October 2007, when a statue of

David Lloyd George David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal Party (United Kingdom), Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leadi ...

was unveiled in

Parliament Square Parliament Square is a square at the northwest end of the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster in central London, England. Laid out in the 19th century, it features a large open green area in the centre with trees to its west, and ...

, Halliday,

Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A List of Nobel laureates in Literature, Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramat ...

and

John Pilger John Richard Pilger (; 9 October 1939 – 30 December 2023) was an Australian journalist, writer, scholar and documentary filmmaker. From 1962, he was based mainly in Britain. He was also a visiting professor at Cornell University in New York. ...

had a letter printed in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' in which they condemned the "celebration of Lloyd George's legacy,” as "disgraceful,” likening his policies of aerial bombardment of

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

ern countries to the present day

Iraq War The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...

. Since leaving the UN, Halliday has been involved with a number of peace initiatives such a
Perdana
founded by the

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

n Prime Minister

Mahathir Mohamad Mahathir bin Mohamad (; ; born 10 July 1925) is a Malaysian politician, author and doctor who was respectively the fourth and seventh Prime Minister of Malaysia, prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 and from 2018 to 2020. He was the ...

. He was one of the main witnesses for the defence in the trials of Mary Kelly and the Pitstop Ploughshares Five who in 2002 had separately damaged a US warplane, at

Shannon Airport Shannon Airport () is an international airport located in County Clare in Ireland. It is adjacent to the Shannon Estuary and lies halfway between Ennis and Limerick. With almost 2 million passengers in 2023, the airport is the third busiest ...

. The trials lasted over three years and all defendants were eventually acquitted. In 2014 he was again an expert witness at the trial of

Margaretta D'Arcy Margaretta Ruth D'Arcy (born 14 June 1934, London) is an Irish actress, writer, playwright, and activist. D'Arcy has been a member of the Irish association of artists, known as Aosdána, since its inauguration and is known for addressing Iris ...

who sat on a runway at Shannon airport to protest its use by the US military. In 2015 he was an expert witness for the defence at the trial of the TDs

Clare Daly Clare Daly (born 16 April 1968) is an Irish politician who was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the Dublin constituency from July 2019 to July 2024. She is a member of Independents 4 Change, affiliated to The Left in ...

and

Mick Wallace Michael Wallace (born 9 November 1955) is an Irish politician, former property developer and former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Republic of Ireland, Ireland for the South (European Parliament constituency), South constituency f ...

who went over the fence at the same airport to attempt to search a US plane for arms. D'Arcy served two terms in prison (three months and two weeks respectively) after she refused to sign a bond and on 22 April 2015 Deputies Wallace and Daly were convicted and fined €2000 each or 30 days imprisonment in default. Immediately afterwards both parliamentarians said on television that they would not pay. Halliday was on board the humanitarian ship the ''MV Rachel Corrie'' en route to Gaza. In a statement released by the Ireland

Palestine Solidarity Campaign The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) is an activist organisation in England and Wales. It was founded in the UK in 1982 and incorporated in 2004 as Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ltd. In 2023, ''The Guardian'' described it as "Europe’s ...

, Halliday said, "We want to emphasise that our aim is not provocation but getting our aid cargo into Gaza. We are calling on the UN to inspect the cargo and escort us into Gaza, and to send a UN representative to sail on board before they enter the exclusion zone." Halliday chaired three

Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on Sri Lanka refers to three tribunals conducted by the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal on the events that took place during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Dublin, 2010 The first Permanent People's Tribunal on Sri Lanka ...

, drawing judgment on the Government of Sri Lanka as "guilty of the crime of genocide against the

Eelam Tamil The Sri Lankan Tamil dialects or Ceylon Tamil or commonly in Tamil language Eelam Tamil () are a group of Tamil dialects used in Sri Lanka by its native Tamil speakers that are distinct from the Tamil dialects spoken in Tamil Nadu. These dialec ...

people.”The Peace Process calls a halt to the Genocide
/ref>

See also

References

Further reading