Hans von Sponeck

Hans-Christof von Sponeck (born 1939) is a German diplomat. He was born in Bremen, Germany, the son of Hans Graf von Sponeck. He served as a UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. In 1957 he was one of the first conscientious objectors in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Sponeck studied history, demography, and physical anthropology in Germany and the United States and joined the UN Development Program in 1968, working in Pakistan and elsewhere. In 1988, he was admitted to the Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg), the Protestant chivalric order to which his father, too, had belonged.

After Denis Halliday resigned as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq in October 1998, Sponeck took over, heading all UN operations in Iraq and managing the Iraqi operations of the Oil-for-Food Programme. In February 2000, Sponeck and Jutta Burghardt, head of the UN World Food Programme in Iraq, both resigned for the same reason as Halliday, to protest against the Iraq sanctions policy of the UN. Sponeck and Halliday wrote an article in The Guardian explaining their position, accusing the sanctions regime of violating the Geneva Conventions and other international laws and causing the death of thousands of Iraqis.

He was equally critical of the "smart sanctions" policy a couple of years later: "What is proposed at this point in fact amounts to a tightening of the rope around the neck of the average Iraqi citizen. The so-called 'new' sanction policy maintains the old bridgeheads of the current sanction regime: the oil escrow account remains with the UN, market-based foreign investment in Iraq will not be allowed and an oil-for-food program stays in the hands of the UN."

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