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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 19 - 25 August 1999 Issue No. 443
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Who's killing Iraq's children?
By Salah HemeidWalking into the ward of the newly born babies in Basra's Children's Hospital one day in April, a Western journalist found that one premature baby had died while she was talking to the doctor in charge of the ward. It was a perfect baby, she recalled later, like the 16 other babies born prematurely in the hospital. Their only problem was the lack of incubators that functioned properly, oxygen and hydration facilities. "Do you know we haven't had one premature baby who survived since 1994," the doctor told her. She later wrote that the horrendous situation she saw at the hospital would break anybody's heart.
For a long time the world has underestimated, and sometimes ignored, the devastating effects of the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq since its August 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Sanctions have caused the country, once one of the richest in the world, to plunge into an apocalyptic situation, battered by poverty, misery and death. But a report issued by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) last week threw light on the extent of the devastation sanctions have inflicted on Iraq and brought into question the reasons for continuing the embargo.
The UNICEF report revealed that in the heavily populated southern and central Iraq, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate recorded 10 years ago. According to Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF, the findings revealed an ongoing humanitarian emergency in Iraq which is attributed to a combination of factors, including the UN sanctions, the two wars Iraq fought in less than two decades, a crippled economy and inaction by the Baghdad government.
The survey, the first since 1991 of child and maternal mortality in Iraq, and released on Thursday also covered the autonomous northern region of Iraq. It was carried out between February and May 1999 by UNICEF together with the Iraqi government, in areas under its control, and with the Kurdish authorities in the northern region of the country. Technical support groups were provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Iraqi children under five are dying at more than twice the rate recorded before UN sanctions were imposed nine years ago
(photo :AFP)
The survey revealed that in the south and centre of the country, home to some 85 per cent of the population, child mortality under the age of five more than doubled from 56 deaths per 1000 live births between 1984 and 1989 to 131 deaths per 1000 live births between 1994 and 1999. Likewise, infant mortality, defined as the death of children in their first year, increased from 47 to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame. The surveys indicated a mortality rate in the south and centre of the country of 294 deaths per 100,000 live births over the 10-year period from 1989 to 1999.
On the basis of the findings, UNICEF has recommended an immediate implementation of specific proposals which include providing additional international funding for humanitarian efforts in Iraq, the urgent implementation by the Iraqi government of agreed nutrition programmes, the adoption of a national policy promoting breast-feeding and restoring baby formula to the current food rations, as well as the provision of additional food for nursing mothers. UNICEF also recommended that both the government and the UN committee monitoring the implementation of sanctions should give priority to contracts for supplies that will have a direct impact on children.
Bellamy noted that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued in the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under five in the country as a whole during the eight-year period from 1991 to 1999. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council's Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states, "Even if not all the suffering in Iraq can be attributed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."
The surveys were reviewed by a panel of independent experts and, according to UNICEF chief statistician, Gerth Jones, it has a margin of error of less than five per cent.
Sorting out who should be blamed for the disturbing findings, the report is clearly indicating that the Iraqi government is partially responsible for the rising deaths in areas under its control because of its mismanagement of the oil-for-food programme which allows it to sell $5.2 billion worth of oil every six months to feed its population of 22 million. Unlike in southern and central Iraq, where the government takes charge of implementing the programme, the United Nations runs the relief operation in the Kurdish-controlled north.
The United States, which, along with Britain, insists on keeping the sanctions in place, immediately seized the opportunity of the report's criticism of the Iraqi government and repeated their accusations that Baghdad deliberately keeps large quantities of medicines in store instead of giving them to needy families. "The bottom line is that if Saddam Hussein would not continue to hoard medicine and capabilities to assist the children of Iraq, they would not have this problem," said State Department spokesman James Rubin.
Iraq responded to the survey's outcome by accusing the United States and Britain of being responsible for the severe shortages in medicine, which have caused the increased children's mortality rate. "UNICEF and other UN agencies are aware of this fact and they pretty well know that Iraq does not withhold these items from its citizens," said Iraqi health minister, Omid Medhet Mubarak.
The UN report clearly proved that the UN sanctions are responsible for the Iraqis' misery and the death of their children. Yet, the world will continue to split into pros, antis and those who ponder on the more philosophical question of why it is all happening. Meanwhile, as the United States continues to use sanctions under the guise of promoting peace and security, and as the government of President Saddam Hussein celebrates its daily "victories" over its American enemy and rules out compromise, more Iraqi children will keep dying.
