John Pilger
Denis Halliday
THIS WEBINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Follow this link for John Pilger’s account of the ongoing trial of Julian Assange CLICK HERE
This webinar is a conversation between ex UN Co-ordinator Denis Halliday and seasoned journalist and film maker John Pilger as they discuss the case of Julian Assange and the threat of war, particularly nuclear war.
There will be an opportunity to ask questions. The seminar will be recorded and your booking will give you access to the recording.
John Pilger is an Australian firebrand journalist. He has reported from all over the world, covering numerous wars, notably Vietnam. Still in his twenties, he became the youngest journalist to receive Britain's highest award for journalism, Journalist of the Year and was the first to win it twice. Moving to the United States, he reported the upheavals there in the late 1960s and 1970s. He marched with America's poor from Alabama to Washington, following the assassination of Martin Luther King. He was in the same room when Robert Kennedy, the presidential candidate, was assassinated in June 1968.
His work in South East Asia produced an iconic issue of the London Mirror, devoted almost entirely to his world exclusive dispatches from Cambodia in the aftermath of Pol Pot's reign. The combined impact of his Mirror reports and his subsequent documentary, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia, raised almost $50 million for the people of that stricken country. Similarly, his 1994 documentary and dispatches report from East Timor, where he travelled under cover, helped galvanise support for the East Timorese, then occupied by Indonesia.
In Britain, his four-year investigation on behalf of a group of children damaged at birth by the drug Thalidomide, and left out of the settlement with the drugs company, resulted in a special settlement.
He has won an Emmy and a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous US and European awards, such as as the Royal Television Society's Best Documentary.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Denis J. Halliday, a national of Ireland, to the post of United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level, and he served as such until end September 1998. During this period, the Security Council Resolution 986 “Oil for Food” Programme, introduced in 1996/97 to assist the people of Iraq under the Economic Sanctions imposed and sustained by the Security Council, was more than doubled in terms of oil revenues allowed. This enabled the introduction of a multi-sectoral approach, albeit modest, to the problems of resolving malnutrition and child mortality. Mr Halliday resigned from the post in Iraq and from the United Nations as a whole effective 31 October 1998 after serving the Organisation since mid 1964 - some 34 years.
Prior to that, and from mid 1994, Mr Halliday served as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management of the United Nations, based in its New York Headquarters. During this period, he introduced on behalf of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly a strategy for the better management, performance and development of some 15,000 United Nations staff world-wide.
Before taking up the Human Resources Management function in mid 1994, following a brief assignment in Thailand as UNDP Regional Representative, Mr Halliday had been Director, Division of Personnel, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from late 1989 into early 1994. He took over that post after being Chef de Cabinet, Office of the Administrator, of the UNDP for some two years.
Mr Halliday has spent most of his long career with the United Nations in development and humanitarian assistance-related posts both in New York and overseas, primarily in South-East Asia. Following a year in Kenya as a Quaker volunteer 1962-63, Mr Halliday joined the United Nations in 1964 serving in Teheran, Iran as a junior professional officer in the forerunner of UNDP - the United Nations Technical Assistance Board and Special Fund. From 1966 to 1972, he served in the Asia Bureau of UNDP Headquarters in New York and then transferred to Malaysia in 1972. In Malaysia, covering programmes in that country plus Singapore and Brunei, he served until 1877 as Deputy Regional Representative. In Indonesia, he continued at the Deputy level for two years until 1979, when he was asked to reopen and head up as Resident Representative the UNDP office in Samoa covering that country, the Cook Islands, the Tokelau Islands and Niue in the South Pacific.
In 1981, Mr Halliday was asked to return to New York to serve in the Asia and Pacific Bureau where he was involved in setting up the first round table meetings of UNDP for Asia. In 1985, he took up the post of Deputy Director, Division of Personnel before becoming Chef de Cabinet in 1987.
Mr Halliday graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and holds an M.A. in Economics, Geography and Public Administration