The US-UN Sanctions on Iraq
August 6th, 2000 will mark the tenth anniversary of
the US-UN economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. These sanctions unleashed
a human catastrophe that is unparalleled in history. Since the end of
the Gulf War in 1991, the regime of sanctions imposed by the Security
Council on the people of Iraq constitute the most punitive measures ever
to have been devised and inflicted on a member State of the United
Nations. They are unprecedented and transgress the acceptable norms of
international law.
The cumulative effects of the more than nine-year
sanctions on the Iraqi people have been devastating. Nine years of
economic, financial and intellectual isolation have caused enormous
human suffering especially among the young, women, and the elderly. It
has resulted in death and disease, broken lives, lost skills, violent
crimes, prostitution, divorce, family desertion, and rampant corruption
which has undermined the entire social and moral fabric of Iraqi
society. The collapse of educational institutions have led to levels of
illiteracy that are harming an entire generation of children.
The six-week long Gulf War in 1991 killed some
250,000 people and devastated all facilities essential to civilian life
and economic productivity throughout Iraq. Electricity generating
plants, water treatment facilities, sewage treatment plants,
communication systems and transportation networks, hospitals, schools
and museums, and agricultural fields were all systematically destroyed.
Iraq was bombed back to the 'Stone Age'.
Because of the sanctions, Iraq has not been able to
repair or replace these facilities which have a direct impact on the
health and well being of its 22 million citizens. More than 1.5 million
people have perished in the last nine and half years as a direct result
of the sanctions.
Yet, in contrast to the Gulf War event and many other
series of conflicts and catastrophes occurring the world over, this
silent war virtually garners no interest from the mainstream western
media; leaving many sadly unaware of the unspeakable human suffering
that is unravelling in Iraq.
Infant and Child Deaths
Last August, Iraq UNICEF Executive Director, Ms.
Carol Bellamy said the findings in the latest UNICEF survey entitled
Child and Maternal Mortality Survey 1999 (released for the first time
since 1991) reveal an ongoing humanitarian emergency; highlighting a
staggering increase in the death tolls of infants and children. The key
findings of the Survey, (conducted in central and southern Iraq which
comprise 85 per cent of the country's population) reveal:
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Under 5-mortality more than doubled from 56 deaths
per 1000 live births before sanctions were imposed (1984 - 1989) to
131 deaths per 1000 live births between 1994 - 1999.
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Infant mortality increased from 47 per 1000 live
births to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame.
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Maternal mortality ratio was 294 deaths per 100,000
live births over the ten year period 1989 to 1999. The Survey also
states that 'the proportion of maternal deaths (31%) shows that
maternal mortality is a leading cause of deaths in the last ten years
among women of reproductive age'.
The comprehensive survey conservatively estimates
that half a million children have died because of the sanctions during
the eight-year period 1991-1998. This means that more than 5000 Iraqi
children die every month from the impact of sanctions on Iraq's water
and sewage treatment facilities, food and nutritional needs, and health
care and delivery system.
Access to potable water is currently 50 per cent of
the 1990 level in urban areas and 33 per cent in the rural areas. The
April 1998 UNICEF Report stated: 'the increase in mortality reported in
public hospitals for children under five years of age is mainly due to
diarrhoea; pneumonia and malnutrition.' Many of the children who survive
death suffer severe physical and mental injury from the cumulative
effects of the sanctions. Apart from diarrhoea, there are also threats
of outbreak from other communicable diseases such as cholera and typhoid
due to the lack of access to safe water and sanitation.
Malnutrition
From 1991 - 1996, acute malnutrition among under
fives increased from three percent to 11 per cent while chronic
malnutrition increased at a higher rate from 18 per cent to 31 per cent
within the same time frame. ('Situation Analysis of Children and Women
in Iraq', UNICEF, April 1998). Malnutrition among children has stunted
the physical, mental and emotional development of an entire generation
of children; leading to long term health problems.
Low infant birth weight (under 2.5 kg) rose from five
percent in 1991 to 22 percent in 1996 due mainly to maternal
malnutrition. About 70 per cent of Iraqi women are anaemic. This will
affect the health of the children concerned. Many will have
underdeveloped organs, mental retardation, remain smaller and weaker
than average and be more vulnerable to sickness, malnutrition and bad
water.
Prior to the war, Iraq depended on imported food for
almost 70 per cent of all its requirements. Today, under the sanctions
regime, its food security and agricultural activities are severely
threatened. Agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides,
farm machineries and other necessary items for food production are not
available under the dual-use policy thus undermining food availability.
Earlier in September 1995, FAO had reported a famine.
Under the dual-use policy, basic humanitarian items
such as chlorine for water purification and sanitation, pencil
graphites, papers, and vaccines which have potential military use are
blocked by the UN Sanctions Committee. With hardly any supply of
vaccines and the lack of testing facilities, it is impossible to detect
new strains and control the widespread outbreak of animal diseases. The
1998 - 1999 'foot-and-mouth' outbreak ravaged thousands of Iraq's
livestock, devastating the Iraqi economy and food supply.
Cancer Epidemic
The US led coalition forces exploded more than one
million depleted uranium (DU) encased shells over Iraq during the war.
No one knows how much of the discarded shell casings and other
radioactive material still remain in Iraq, but several investigators who
have traveled to the area report that shell casings containing depleted
uranium are scattered all over the ground in many areas, including in
school yards and other similar civilian locales.
According to Professor Siegwart-Horst Gunther, who
was one of the first to reveal that DU had been used in the Gulf War,
'many DU projectiles spread over the battlefields have been collected by
children and used as toys with possibly devastating consequences'. He
said that documents released under the US Freedom of Information Act
indicate that the Allied Forces would have left more than 300 tons of DU
on the battlefields between Kuwait and Iraq mostly in the form of toxic
and radioactive dust. Much of the uranium dust has been scattered about
thousands of square miles of desert. Entire regions have been
contaminated as radioactive DU has seeped into the subsoil and water
table. Professor Gunther added that: 'It is feared that uranium
particles get into the ground water and finally reach the food chain.
Highly toxic uranium dust if inhaled can result in lung cancer'.
DU is responsible for the ten-fold increase in
cancers in the country. Startling increase in the incidence of
congenital malformation cases such as phocomelia, achondroplasia and
mongolism as well as bone dysplasia, central nervous system disorders
and anencephaly have been recorded. Myloid, lymphatic and
undifferentiated leukaemia and increase in the incidence of relapses
have all been attributed to the Gulf War. If cancers continue on their
present upward trend, experts say 44 percent of the population will
develop cancer within ten years. DU contamination of the food chain will
continue for generations. The devastating long-term effect of radiation
(the radioactive half-life of DU is 4.5 billion years) has an adverse
effect on both the current population and many generations to come; the
genetically deformed newborn and the environment.
Emerging Diseases
Many diseases, which had been virtually eradicated in
Iraq before the war is making a comeback in this once-medically advanced
country. Poliomyelitis has increased by a multiple ranging from 2 to
18.6 times since 1989, as contracts for vaccines are not approved by the
Security Council. Cholera rose from zero cases in 1989 to 2560 cases in
1998 and scabies increased every year from zero cases in 1989 to 43,580
in 1998. Health conditions and diseases such as malnutrition,
diphtheria, and cholera are posing a big challenge to the highly
specialised Iraqi doctors as they were not previously trained to treat
these typical third world health problems (ICRC Report, December, 1999)
Health System Collapse
Under the sanctions restricted conditions, the public
health care system has eroded at every level. Basic supplies in the
hospitals such as clean bed linen, proper lighting, soap, sterilisation
equipment, oxygen, catheters, gauze, x-ray films, writing materials and
the like are lacking. Life-saving medical supplies such as chemotherapy
drugs, antibiotics, vaccines etc., are either banned or delayed under
the dual-use policy. Limited medicines and medical supplies which are
allowed in cannot be efficiently distributed or administered because
other complementary equipment are vetoed or delayed for more than a
year; due to the lack of transportation; communication breakdown;
dilapidated bridges and roads; and erratic electrical supply which
affects refrigerated storage capacity. Poor hospital conditions such as
overcrowding and inadequate ventilation as well as the lack of access to
many basic medical supplies increasingly frustrate the efforts of
doctors. Many of their young patients are dying from diseases, which are
easily treatable under normal conditions. Not only are they unable to
save lives, doctors cannot even relive pain without painkillers.
It is evident that the US-UN imposed sanctions have
taken a genocidal toll on the civilian population. The UN sanctions
against Iraq that continue to be imposed at the insistence of the US
(with the UK in full support) are a gross violation of international
laws and the UN Charter. Sanctions in Iraq violate the right to life and
the full range of economic and social rights including the right to
health, education, food and an adequate standard of living, all
guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, The
Convention on the Rights of the Child, and other international treaties
including the Geneva Convention.
The fact that this crime against humanity is
perpetrated in the name of the United Nations is an affront to human
morality and decency. It clearly shows that the Security Council has
abandoned its legal and moral responsibilities towards the Iraqi
peoples. That the Security Council has been used by the US and the UK to
pursue their political interests is a sign of the times - globalisation
of a new world order.
Since 1991, the US led UN Security Council has
instituted ten sanctions regimes. Following its military debacle in
Somalia, the US has often opted for sanctions rather than military
intervention. Indeed between 1993 and 1996, 35 new sanctions regimes
were initiated by the US (Garfield Nov 1999): by 1997, US sanctions of
some kind were in force against more than 50 countries containing 68
percent of the world’s peoples (Meyers April 20, 1997). The cost of
sanctions are born by the civilian populations, just as in economic
globalisation, sanctions are almost exclusively employed by the rich
market economies of the North, against weaker and more dependent states.
They are ‘part of a general assault on states that resist the
cultural, political or economic penetration of the US led post cold war
world order’ (Garfield Nov 1999).
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