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Over 1.6 Million Iraqis Die Because of U.N. Sanctions
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| Iraqi children first victims
of U.N. sanctions |
BAGHDAD, Dec. 29, 2001 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iraq on Saturday informed the United Nations Sanctions Committee that a total of 1,614,303 people had died due to the stringent U.N. sanctions on the country since 1990.
In a letter to the U.N. Sanctions committee, Man'm Al-Qadi, Iraq's interim charge d'affaires in the U.N., said that the colossal human losses include 667,773 children under the age of five, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.
In sharp contrast, the report said there were only 258 recorded deaths of children under five in 1989, one year before the sanctions were imposed on Iraq, the Chinese Xinhua news agency reported.
The letter slammed the "arbitrary" practices of the U.N. committee by suspending Iraq's contracts signed with other countries to import food, medicine and other essentials within the framework of the U.N. oil-for-food program since 1996.
Iraq has often criticized the program for failing to meet the humanitarian needs of its people and complained that the severe shortage of food and medicine has contributed to the sharp increase of mortality rate of its people.
Iraq has been under sweeping U.N. sanctions since its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
In July 2001, the Iraqi health ministry said that more than 9,000 Iraqis died in June 2001 due to the 11-year-old U.N. sanctions, bringing the country's death toll of the sanctions to 1,508,006 since August 1990.
The ministry's report, also carried by the INA said 9,080 people died as a result of shortages in food and medicine in June, compared with 8,967 in May.
In June, some 6,078 children under the age of five died of diarrhea, pneumonia, respiratory infections and malnutrition, it said. In May, 5,712, children died from the same reasons.
The report added that 3,012 elderly people died of heart diseases, diabetes, hypertension and malignant neoplasm, in comparison to 3,255 who died in May.
Such a high mortality rate, resulting from malnutrition and severe medicine shortage caused by the sanctions, was in sharp contrast with the same 1989 period, when only 387 children and 434 elderly people died, the report said.
Iraq has long urged the U.N. to totally lift the sanctions, imposed in 1990. The U.N. humanitarian program, launched in 1996, allows Iraq to sell crude to finance imports of humanitarian goods to help offset the crippling impacts of the sanctions.
Under the "oil-for-food" program, approximately 72 percent of Iraq's petroleum revenues finance the humanitarian program, 25 percent goes to a fund set up to pay damages arising from Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, 2.2 percent covers the U.N. costs for administering the program, and 0.8 percent for the administration of the U.N. Monitoring and Inspection Commission.
Baghdad has said the program fails to cover medical and food shortages that have been instigated by the sanctions.
The United Nations has said Iraq's handling of medicines and foodstuffs is a reason for the shortages, saying Baghdad stockpiles medicines.
Iraq says the drugs that are stored cannot be used without other medicines and equipment, the arrival of which has been delayed.
According to a report issued by the UNICEF carried by INA, almost one million children in southern and central Iraq are chronically malnourished. "What we are seeing is a dramatic deterioration in the nutritional well-being of Iraqi children since 1991," said Phillipe Heffinck, UNICEF representative in Baghdad.
In the 30-state U.S-led aggression in 1991, thousand of tons of laser guided bombs and uranium tipped weapons with total explosive power equal to seven Hiroshima nuclear blasts were used against Iraq, said the report.
The use of Depleted Uranium during that period has caused the outbreak of new diseases and increased the incidence of leukemia, congenital deformities and hereditary diseases.
A UNICEF report to evaluate its work in Iraq during the past ten years affirmed that mortality rates among children under the age of five was 32% in 1996, in comparison with 18.7% in 1991.
The report showed that 54% of children suffered from diarrhea and 43% were infected with respiratory diseases. The report mentioned that children between the age of 6-11 had left schools to get jobs to support their families financially. Statistics showed that the rate of dropouts estimated at 22.6% between 1990-1998 as compared to 7% during 1976-1993.
Under U.N. resolutions, the sanctions can be lifted only when Iraq proves it has no more weapons of mass destruction and fulfilled other conditions regarding its invasion of Kuwait.
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in July, Iraqi permanent delegate to the U.N., Mohammad al-Duri, said that a total of 1,373 contracts, worth 3.4 billion U.S. dollars, have been put on hold by the U.N. Sanctions Committee "under the pretext of dual use," news agencies reported.
"The suspension of contracts has reached an unbearable level," Duri said in the letter.
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