During |
1989:7110 deaths |
1991:27473 |
1994:52905 |
1997:58845 |
1998:71279 |
1999(Jan.- Nov.): 73572 |
Table 1:
annual deaths of children in Iraq under the age of five from
respiratory infection, diarrhea and gastroenteritis and
malnutrition |
The annual number of deaths of children under
age five grew more than tenfold from 1989 to 1999. Total deaths of children under age five from these selected
causes alone during 1990 to November 1999 is 502,492.
While children under age five are the most
vulnerable age group, except for the extreme elderly, every age
group has suffered radical increases in the numbers of deaths. Members of the population
with serious chronic illnesses requiring regular medication, or
therapy, suffer the highest percentages of death of any sectors,
approaching 100% for some illnesses where survival rates were as
high as 95% before sanctions.
The sanctions target to kill, or injure
infants, children, the elderly, and the chronically ill.
The red Crescent and other knowledgeable
professional groups believe it will be years after the end of
sanctions before the increase in deaths from most causes stops
rising because of the cumulative effect of the sanctions on the
physical conditions of parents, children, the new born and the
overall environment.
Most of those who survive suffer severe
physical and mental injury from the sanctions. Indicative of the impact of
sanctions is the enormous rise in the percentage of registered
births under 2.5 kilograms, a dangerously low birth weight in a
nation without adequate food, medicine and medical supplies and
equipment. Like death,
under weight births have risen radically every year:
Year / % of live
births at weights under 2.5 kilograms
|
1990:4.5 |
1991:10.8 |
1994:21.1 |
1998:23.8 |
1999(Jan. - Nov.): 24.1 |
Table 2: % of live births at weights under
2.5 kilograms |
The percentage of live births below 2.5 kg. has
increased more than fivefold to one in four registered births. The consequence for the
lives of these children is enormous. Many will have
underdeveloped organs, mental retardation, remain smaller and weaker
than average and be more vulnerable to sickness, malnutrition and
bad water. Their life
expectancy has been reduced by as much as 30%. Probably 90% of all the
infants born in Iraq since 1990 have significantly lower birth weights than they
would if there were no sanctions. The effect on lives and health of
children with higher birth weights is also drastic. This is why
foreign medical teams for five years have referred to a “stunted
generation” in
Iraq.
Suggestive of the struggle the children living
and dying under sanctions in Iraq face are the following increases
since 1990 in treated cases of nutrition related sicknesses and
deficiencies.
Year / Number of
cases |
Kwashiorkor |
1990:
485 (base) |
1991: 12796 26.3
times |
1994: 20975 42.6 “ |
1998: 30232 61.4 “ |
Table 3:
Number of cases of
Kwashiorkor |
-- |
Year / Number of
cases |
Marasmus |
1990:
5193
(base) |
1991: 96186 18.5
times |
1994: 192296 37
“ |
1998: 264468 50.8 “ |
Table 4: Number of Cases of
Marasmus |
-- |
Year / Number of
cases |
Protein,
Calorie, Vitamin deficiency,
Malnutrition |
1990:
96809 (base) |
1991:
947974 9.8
times |
1994: 1576194 16.3 “ |
1998: 1910309 19.7 |
Table 5: Number of cases of Protein,
Calorie, Vitamin deficiency,
Malnutrition |
Kwashiorkor is an extremely dangerous end
product of malnutrition in which the victim wastes and dies without
early intensive care.
Few doctors in Iraq had ever seen a case before late
1990. From medical
school and continuing studies they associated Kwashiorkor with
starvation in the poorest regions of Africa and south Asia during
periods of war, drought, pestilence and other calamities.
Marasmus inflicts a lower
death rate than kwashiorkor, but is extremely dangerous, permanently
damaging and requires early and extended care for survival. The effects of severe and
protracted malnutrition are permanent and life shortening.
Common communicable diseases preventable by
vaccination which are provided nearly all children in developed
countries and were standard in Iraq before 1990 have increased by
multiples. While rates
for these diseases fluctuate unlike the death rates and rates for
malnutrition related sickness, because of the cyclical nature of
their communication, they have been regularly higher, increasingly
so, and have afflicted additional hundreds of thousands of
children.
Increases in 1998 over 1989
were as follows:
-
whooping cough, 3.4 times;
-
measles, 4.5 times (25, 818 cases);
-
mumps, 3.7 times (35,881).
The Sanctions Committee of
the Security Council has failed to approve negotiated contracts for
Iraq to purchase vaccines for these and other diseases. Poliomyelitis, which had
been virtually extinguished in Iraq, has increased by a multiple
ranging from 2 to 18.6 times since 1989. Cholera rose from zero
cases in 1989 to 2560 cases in 1998 and conditions in Iraq threaten
an epidemic. Amoebic
dysentery was 13 times greater in 1998, totaling 264,290 cases, over
1989 and much higher in several earlier years. Typhoid fever was up 10.9
times to 19825 cases in 1998 over 1989. Scabies increased every year
from zero cases in 1989 to 43,580 in 1998. Every
adult knows the misery, suffering and sometimes heartbreak these
preventable communicable diseases cause.
Doctors, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, all
persons in health care, work under tragic conditions. Doctors and nurses uniformly
state that patients they could easily save under normal conditions
die every day. The
hospitals are in wretched condition: dark, cold, dirty, stairwells
crumbling, walls peeling, beds without sheets, plumbing inoperable,
electricity erratic, equipment without parts, medicines, oxygen,
aesthetics, antiseptics, antibiotics, x-ray film, catheters, gauze,
aspirin, light bulbs, pencils always scarce, often unavailable. Common life saving medicines
from dehydration tablets to insulin are never in adequate
supply.
In plain numbers without measuring the
conditions under which they were performed, or the availability of
important equipment and supplies, major surgical operations have
declined each year from a monthly average of 15,125 in 1989 to 3823
in November 1999 or by 74.7%. The monthly average number of
laboratory investigations has declined from 1,494,050 in 1989 to
454,375 in November 1999, or by 68.6%.
Drastic deterioration in the whole environment,
the physical plant, sanitation and the introduction of some
25,000,000 ounces of depleted uranium by U.S. aircraft and missiles
have caused enormous increases in illnesses from tuberculosis to
leukemia and other cancers, tumors and malformations in
fetuses. These
conditions will take many years and billions of dollars to restore
to 1989 levels. The
hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed and the health of millions
damaged can never be restored.
Today unemployment is 60%. 95% of the private sector of
the economy is shut down.
There are no ambulances. 80% of the sanitation trucks
from 10 years ago are inoperable. There are no new trucks,
cars, tractors, buses, or other vehicles. Food distribution from a
comprehensive rationing system controlling staples delivers 1100
calories per day for every person throughout the country, Kurd,
Sunni and Shi’ite Muslim, Christian, Jew, rich, poor, alien, with
special rations for infants, pregnant women, the severely
malnourished, and others with special needs. The poor cannot
significantly supplement their food rations. In 1989, daily caloric
intake in Iraq averaged 3400.
These brief facts demonstrate the deadly
conditions of life deliberately inflicted on the entire population
of Iraq, but which inherently impact on infants, children, the
elderly and chronically ill first and destroy a vast part of the
nation and its overwhelmingly Muslim peoples.
Representative of the attitude of the U.S.
government foreign policy makers toward Iraq and the sanctions are
the considered remarks of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
in a syndicated newspaper article published in the second week of
January 2000 in which he referred to the “alleged suffering of the
Iraqi people.” Then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine
Albright spoke more forthrightly, if more cruelly. She stated in an interview
on the top-rated CBS national network magazine show 60 Minutes, seen
by tens of millions of people in the spring of 1997, that she
believed the deaths from the sanctions of 585,000 Iraqi children
under the age of five as direct result of sanctions reported by the
U.S. Food and Agriculture Organization in late 1986 was a price
worth paying to maintain the sanctions against Iraq.
The Sanctions Violate the
Genocide Convention of 1948
Genocide is defined in the
Genocide Convention, in part, as follows:
Article II...genocide means any of the
following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in
part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a)
Killing members of the group;
(b)
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the
group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part;
There can be no doubt that the sanctions
against Iraq intentionally destroyed in major part members of a
national group and a religious group, as such, killing members of
the groups, causing bodily and mental harm to their members and
deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about
their physical destruction, at least, in part. If this is not genocide,
what is?
The United States, after decades of resisting,
finally ratified the Genocide Convention before these sanctions were
imposed. It has
frequently accused other governments of genocide, sometimes
assaulting them severely with its massive, high tech military
weapons against which nearly all nations are defenseless.
The Food for Oil Program has
failed to stop the increased death rates
The Food for Oil program was approved in
December 1996 as a means of maintaining the sanctions against Iraq
which were meeting growing opposition in the Security Council. After three years of
operation barely six billion dollars in contracts under the program
have been received from 19 billion dollars of oil sales. Despite Iraq’s desperate
needs, more of the funds from sales of its oil have been turned over
to the U.S., the UN and others making claims against Iraq than have
been allocated to contracts approved for purchase of food, medicine,
equipment and equipment parts for the people of Iraq. Five billion in contracts
for purchases entered into by Iraq has not been approved.
As has been seen the deaths of children and
every other segment of the society from the sanctions have continued
to rise in 1997, 1998 and 1999. To rebuild the health care
system, the food production processing, storage and distribution
system and the water systems will cost many billions. Restoring facilities for
health, communications, transportation, education, industry and
clean up of the environment polluted by the U. S. aerial assaults,
including the use of depleted uranium found in extremely dangerous
concentrations in parts of Iraq, will cost many tens of billions of
dollars.
Iraq was devoting more than 20 billion annually
to public facilities, goods and services before 1989. Income from oil sales for
1997-1999 averaged under 2 billion dollars annually, 10% of the
amounts available before sanctions. If Iraq devoted all of the
funds under the Oil for Food Program to food, medicine and water,
the deaths caused by sanctions would continue to rise and the health
of the nation decline.
The United States has proceeded to frustrate approval of
contracts under the program in a systematic way to prolong the
genocide against Iraq.
United States military aircraft deliberately
destroyed Iraq’s water storage, distribution and quality control
systems during the intensive bombing during January and February
1991. Within two weeks
there was no running water in any city or town in Iraq. Many tens of thousands of
people in Iraq have died as a direct result of drinking contaminated
water.
Iraq has entered into contracts totaling
$700,000,000 for water and sewage projects. This sum is a very small
fraction of current needs.
Only $65,000,000 has been received, less than 9%. This is done deliberately to
continue conditions of life destructive of the population of
Iraq. Purchase of
chlorine for municipal water treatment, a standard international
usage, has been completely rejected. People continue to die at
increasing rates from bad water.
Oil production for even the very low levels
authorized under the program, less than 1/3 of the pre-sanctions
level, has been difficult to achieve and usually below authorized
amounts, because of deteriorated and destroyed facilities and lack
of equipment and parts.
Still the sanctions committee has approved only 18% of the
tendered contracts for oil production, refining and transport. This is done to prevent Iraq
from restoring its ability to save its people through the sales of
oil.
Of the $207 million sought for communications
under the program, not a penny has been approved. The sanctions committee
fears communicated truth will set opinion free and end the
sanctions.
The Oil for Food Program has never been
anything more than a means for slowly increasing the rate of
destruction of the people of Iraq. Security Council Resolution
1284 is simply a means of starting the process over again. During three years under the
program from 1996 to 1999, well over 200,000 children under age five
died in drastically increasing numbers each year at a rate growing
from just under 9 to well over 10 times the number who died in
1989. That experience
must not be repeated.
The sanctions must be ended now.
It is criminal to hold the lives of the people
of Iraq hostage to demands of the U.S. against their government,
whatever those demands may be.
In war it is prohibited to use starvation as a weapon. Medical aid must be given
enemy wounded. Under
sanctions an Iraqi is being deliberately killed every two minutes by
conditions of life.
Sanctions are the functional equivalent of pointing guns at
the heads of Iraq’s children and elderly while saying do what we
demand to their government, or we will shoot, then pulling a trigger
every two minutes, or less.
To save the United Nations in the judgment of
history, the Security Council must end the sanctions
immediately. They are
genocide.
To save itself from the judgment of the people
of the world, the U.S.
must immediately act to end the sanctions and account for its
acts.
Sincerely, |
Ramsey Clark , |
formerly U.S. Attorney General
|