Effects on the Iraqi people during sanctions[edit source | editbeta]
High rates of malnutrition, lack of medical supplies, and diseases from lack of clean water were reported during sanctions.[27] In 2001, the chairman of the Iraqi Medical Association's scientific committee sent a plea to the BMJ to help it raise awareness of the disastrous effects the sanctions were having on the Iraqi healthcare system.[28]
The modern Iraqi economy had been highly dependent on oil exports; in 1989, the oil sector comprised 61% of the GNP. A drawback of this dependence was the narrowing of the economic base, with the agricultural sector rapidly declining in the 1970s. Some claim that, as a result, the post-1990 sanctions had a particularly devastating effect on Iraq’s economy and food security levels of the population.[29]
Shortly after the sanctions were imposed, the Iraqi government developed a system of free food rations consisting of 1000 calories per person/day or 40% of the daily requirements, on which an estimated 60% of the population relied for a vital part of their sustenance. With the introduction of the Oil-for-Food Programme in 1997, this situation gradually improved. In May 2000 a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) survey noted that almost half the children under 5 years suffered from diarrhoea, in a country where the population is marked by its youth, with 45% being under 14 years of age in 2000. Power shortages, lack of spare parts and insufficient technical know-how lead to the breakdown of many modern facilities.[29]
The overall literacy rate in Iraq had been 78% in 1977 and 87% for adult women by 1985, but declined rapidly since then.[citation needed] Between 1990 and 1998, over one fifth of Iraqi children stopped enrolling in school, consequently increasing the number of non-literates and losing all the gains made in the previous decade. The 1990s also saw a dramatic increase in child labor, from a virtually non-existent level in the 1980s.[citation needed] The per capita income in Iraq dropped from $3510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996, heavily influenced by the rapid devaluation of the Iraqi dinar.[29]
Iraq had been one of the few countries in the Middle East that invested in women’s education. But this situation changed from the late eighties on with increasing militarisation and a declining economic situation. Consequently the economic hardships and war casualties in the last decades have increased the number of women-headed households and working women.[29]
Researcher Richard Garfield estimated that "a minimum of 100,000 and a more likely estimate of 227,000 excess deaths among young children from August 1991 through March 1998" from all causes including sanctions.[8] Other estimates have put the number at 170,000 children.[23][30][31] UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that
if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through 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 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed 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." [32]
Chlorine is commonly used to purify water, but because it can also be used to make poisonous chlorine gas, the sanctions regime included banning its manufacture under any conditions throughout Iraq and its import severely restricted.[33] [34] After inspecting Baghdad's facilities, David Sole, President of the Sanitary Chemists & Technicians Association, noting a high rates of diseases from lack of clean water followed the Gulf War and sanctions, recommended that liquid chlorine be sent to Iraq to disinfect water supplies.[35]
Denis Halliday was appointed United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level. In October 1998 he resigned after a 34 year career with the UN in order to have the freedom to criticise the sanctions regime, saying "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide"[36] However, Sophie Boukhari a UNESCO Courier journalist, reports that "some legal experts are skeptical about or even against using such terminology" and quotes Mario Bettati: "People who talk like that don’t know anything about law. The embargo has certainly affected the Iraqi people badly, but that’s not at all a crime against humanity or genocide."[37]
Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, subsequently also resigned in protest, calling the effects of the sanctions a "true human tragedy".[38] Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq, followed them.[citation needed]
Estimates of deaths due to sanctions[edit source | editbeta]
Estimates of excess deaths during the sanctions vary widely, use different methodologies and cover different time-frames.[32][39][40] Some estimates include (some of them include effects of the Gulf War in the estimate):
Mohamed M. Ali, John Blacker, and Gareth Jones estimate between 400,000 and 500,000 excess under-5 deaths.[41]
UNICEF: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago." (As is customary, this report was based on a survey conducted in cooperation with the Iraqi government and by local authorities in the provinces not controlled by the Iraqi government)[42]
Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.[43]
"Probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20 October 2003[44]
350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.[45]
Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less than] than half a million children" because estimation efforts are unable to isolate the effects of sanctions alone due to the lack of "anything resembling a controlled experiment",[46] and "one potential explanation" for the statistics showing an increase in child mortality was that "they were not real, but rather results of manipulations by the Iraqi government."[46]
"Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period"[9] for sanctions-related excess deaths.[47]
Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., (1995) The Lancet British medical journal: 567,000 children.[48] A co-author (Zaidi) did a follow-up study in 1996, finding "much lower ... mortality rates ... for unknown reasons."[49]
Amatzia Baram, Director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa, reported almost no difference in the rate of Iraq’s population growth between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent) and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent), suggesting that the sanctions-related death rate is lower than reported, while also stating "Every child who suffers from malnutrition as a result of the embargo is a tragedy".[50]
Infant and child death rates[edit source | editbeta]
Iraq's infant and child survival rates fell after sanctions were imposed.
A May 25, 2000 BBC article[51] reported that before Iraq sanctions were imposed by the UN in 1990, infant mortality had "fallen to 47 per 1,000 live births between 1984 and 1989. This compares to approximately 7 per 1,000 in the UK." The BBC article was reporting from a study of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, titled "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq", that was published in the May 2000 Lancet medical journal.[52] The study concluded that in southern and central Iraq, infant mortality rate between 1994 and 1999 had risen to 108 per 1,000. Child mortality rate, which refers to children between the age of one and five years, also drastically inclined from 56 to 131 per 1,000.[51] In the autonomous northern region during the same period, infant mortality declined from 64 to 59 per 1000 and under-5 mortality fell from 80 to 72 per 1000, which was attributed to better food and resource allocation.
The Lancet publication[52] was the result of two separate surveys by UNICEF[32] between February and May 1999 in partnership with the local authorities and with technical support by the WHO. "The large sample sizes - nearly 24,000 households randomly selected from all governorates in the south and center of Iraq and 16,000 from the north - helped to ensure that the margin of error for child mortality in both surveys was low," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said.[32]
In the spring of 2000 a U.S. Congressional letter demanding the lifting of the sanctions garnered 71 signatures, while House Democratic Whip David Bonior called the economic sanctions against Iraq "infanticide masquerading as policy."[53]
