Iraqi Sanctions Should End 

Nearly seven years after Iraq was forced out of Kuwait, sanctions have remained in place, causing the Iraqi people to suffer from poverty, malnutrition and a collapsed infrastructure. The hardest hit are the most vulnerable — the Iraqi children as well as the elderly. These sanctions are causing untold suffering for the Iraqi people.

Here are some facts:
More than one million Iraqis have died — more than 600,000 of them children — as a direct consequence of economic sanctions. As many as 12% of the children surveyed in Baghdad are malnourished, 28% have stunted growth and 29% are underweight. — United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), December 1995.

The United Nations International Children's Education Fund estimates that 4,500 children are dying each month from problems related to malnutrition and a shortage of medical supplies. This is one child every ten minutes. — The Christian Science Monitor, 1996

Dr. Leon Eisenberg of Harvard Medical School recently wrote that the sanctions against Iraq represent a "disastrous example of war against the public health . . . the destruction of the infrastructure resulted in devastating long-term effects on health." Water is contaminated and electricity has been limited in a society that had grown dependent on modern facilities. — New England Journal of Medicine, April 25, 1997

Since the onset of sanctions, there has been a six-fold increase in the mortality rate for children under five and the majority of the population has been on a semi-starvation diet. — World Health Organization (WHO), March 1996

Sanctions are inhibiting the importation of spare parts, chemicals, and the means of transportation required to provide water and sanitation services to the civilian population of Iraq. — UNICEF, 1995

Wheat-flour prices increased by 11,667 times since 1990. — Center for Economic and Social Rights, August 1995

Twenty percent of the Iraqi population lives in dire poverty and cannot come close to affording the astronomically rising prices. — United Nations, 1996

The embargo is illegal because:

Collective punishment is prohibited by international law; punishment of innocent people violates universal principles of human rights; starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is strictly prohibited by international law.

The current oil-for-food deal, allowing Iraq to export a limited amount of oil, is flagrantly inadequate to meet these needs. After 30% of this revenue is deducted by the United Nations to pay for dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and for war-related claims, the remaining six-month revenues translate to a mere 33 cents per day for each Iraqi! This amount is expected to pay for all of the citizens' needs. This includes food and health and public services. It also includes the rebuilding of Iraq's devastated infrastructure, especially the sewage treatment and water purification plants, whose deterioration resulted in a public health hazard of enormous magnitude, with rampant water-borne infectious diseases at levels unseen for more than 50 years.

The total lifting of the economic sanctions is the only realistic solution to the continued suffering of Iraq's more than 22 million citizens. Sanctions are a blunt and indiscriminate political instrument of punishment.