Two hundred and fifty people die each day in Iraq as a direct result of sanctions. ‘The increase in mortality reported in public hospitals for children under five years of age (an excess of some 40,000 deaths yearly compared with 1989) is mainly due to diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. In those over five years of age, the increase (an excess of some 50,000 deaths yearly compared with 1989) is associated with heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, liver or kidney diseases’.^[1]

Statistically the number of Iraqi children under age five who have died since August 1990 under United Nations (UN) sanctions is about equal to the entire Denver- Boulder- Greeley population under the age of 18.

Infant mortality rates have more than doubled from 56/1000 births in 1984-1989 to 131/1,000 in 1994-1999. ^[2]  Other sources suggest even lower pre-war infant mortality rates.^[3],[4]

So why all of these deaths?  The Gulf War bombings destroyed the public health infrastructure, including water, sewage, electric and communications systems.  Then sanctions prohibited the subsequent import of spare parts to repair this damaged or destroyed infrastructure. 

For example, prior to the Gulf War clean water was available to 90% of the population, now only 41% of the population has access to clean water.^[5]  With the public health infrastructure decimated, cases of polio increased five-fold, typhoid increased twenty-fold, and measles doubled^[6]. 

Sanctions also impact food availability.  Though childhood obesity was the number one medical problem for Iraqi children before the war, 1 in 4 of Iraq’s 3.7 million children are now malnourished.^[7]

  Iraqi parents and their sick child, (photo courtesy of Voices)

Food for Oil Facts

Since December 1996, $8.071 billion worth of food and medicines have been delivered to Iraq under the oil for food program.  This equals approximately $323/person/3.5 years (Iraq has about 22.5 million people).^[8]  Even if the program ran perfectly, this allocation of funds would be entirely inadequate to sustain the health of the Iraqi population.

Briefly, the oil-for-food program allows Iraq to pump oil, the sales of which are held in a UN escrow account with no funds given directly to the Iraqi government.  The distribution of humanitarian supplies is monitored by the UN to the level of the end-user.

Nearly $2 billion worth of supplies contracted under the oil-for-food program have been put on hold by the U.S. and Britain, seriously jeopardizing public health infrastructure, including water treatment, irrigation, sewage, electricity.^[8] 

Theorizing why sanctions that exempt some medicines and food still affect infant mortality rates so dramatically, researchers suggest that ‘because sanctions distort the economy and ultimately a family’s allocation of resources, the exemption of goods for humanitarian reasons may have only a limited effect on the health of civilians’.  They add, ‘such provisions, however, may make imposing sanctions politically more acceptable’.^[9]

Reactions to Sanctions

‘This is a crime… This is a crime against children,’ an Iraqi doctor said pointedly to me and nine other members of CCMEP’s first delegation to Iraq while we visited the Maternal and Pediatric Hospital in the southern city of Basrah where we watched premature infants gasp for each breath.

Legally, sanctions are being labeled as ‘a crime against humanity under international law’.

Specifically, the sanctions are a breach of the Geneva Conventions, which ban the starving or attacking of civilians, and the International Convention against Genocide’.^[10]

  Iraqi mother grieving for her child (photo Mark Schneider)

Researchers suggest the international community extend the military rule of proportionality to include sanctions.  The rule states:  ‘In conducting military operations, constant care must be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects… Those who plan or decide upon an attack must…take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects; and refrain from deciding to launch any attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated’.^[11] 

Denis Halliday, one of three top United Nations humanitarian officials working in Iraq who resigned in protest of the policy has said, ‘we are in the process of destroying an entire society, It is a simple and terrifying as that.  It is illegal and immoral’.^[12]

Doctors we met in Iraq asked for Physician Desk References that they could not afford.  A medical student walked next to us eyeing the 1999 Pediatrics journals we brought as gifts.  The student gestured asking to have an issue and the hospital staff scolded him because the journals were needed for the library.  Prior to the Gulf War the University of Mosul library received hundreds of journals, now these resources are banned under sanctions. 

Iraqi professors told us how their colleagues had been invited to speak at or attend conferences abroad only to have foreign governments reject their Visa application due to the travel ban imposed on Iraq. 

Sanctions on Iraq have effectively cut off an entire population from the outside world.  The one thing Iraqi children do know of the U.S., however, is the regular bombing by U.S. and British planes in the no-fly zones that cover over half of Iraqi territory.  By U.S. admission, U.S. and British planes bomb Iraq every two to three days, and because the no-fly zones are not mandated by the UN, they are also violating international law

Opposition to economic sanctions does not only come from humanitarian quarters.  Most recently the former UNSCOM chief weapons inspector, Richard Butler, said, sanctions have harmed the Iraqi people and ‘I deeply believe that sanctions as now applied to Iraq have been utterly counterproductive for this disarmament purpose’.^[13]                   Children in Mosul, Iraq (photo Karen Norder)

Additionally, Scott Ritter, a former UNSCOM inspector, was recently asked in an interview with Fellowship of Reconciliation, ‘Does Iraq possess militarily viable biological or chemical weapons?’ the answer is ‘NO!’ ‘Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale?’ ‘No!’  ‘Can Iraq produce today chemical weapons on a meaningful scale?’ ‘No!’ ‘Can Iraq produce biological weapons on a meaningful scale?’ ‘No!’ ‘Ballistic missiles?’ ‘No!’ ‘It is ‘no’ across the board.  So from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed.’^[14]

The Colorado Democratic Convention, Rep. Mark Udall, Rep. Diana DeGette, The American Public Health Association, Colorado Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Rocky Mtn Methodist Conference, the City of Boulder, the Colorado Muslim Society, Archbishop Chaput of Denver, Bishop Hanifen of Pueblo, AFSC, and many others in Colorado and the nation have joined calls by Halliday and Von Sponeck and others in the international community to lift economic sanctions and depolitize the survival of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Despite all the opposition domestically and abroad, Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright has not changed her stance on sanctions since her 1996 60 Minutes interview with Leslie Stahl.  In that interview Stahl asked, ‘one half of a million children have died, more than died in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is the price worth it?’  Albright’s responded, ‘I think this is a very hard choice, but the price- we think the price is worth it’.

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