By Judith Crosbie

"Fatalism" exists among Iraqi people and they believe conditions in
their
country will get worse, the director of UNICEF Ireland, Ms Maura Quinn,
has
said after a 12-day visit to Iraq.

Ms Quinn said Iraq has been devastated by the UN sanctions banning
imports
and exports imposed on it after the Gulf War in 1990. Although the
oil-for-food programme allows some food and medicine into the country in

exchange for oil, supplies are lacking. In one hospital Ms Quinn
visited,
she was told by a doctor that half of the 19 babies in the hospital's
incubators would die within two days.

Ms Quinn's statement comes just over a week after Mr Hans von Sponeck,
UN
humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq, resigned in protest at the impact of
sanctions. There has been speculation that the resignation of Ms Jutta
Purghart, head of the UN World Food Programme in Iraq, was also over the

sanctions. Mr von Sponeck's resignation comes two years after his Irish
predecessor, Mr Denis Halliday, also stepped down in protest.

Ms Quinn said her UNICEF colleagues in Iraq found it hard to deal with
the
situation, particularly because of the the attitude of ordinary people.
"It's awful that people don't feel as if it's ever going to change. They

feel that the sanctions are going to go on and on. Instead of having
three
hours' electricity in Bagdad they will have one hour in a couple of
years'
time. That they'll have dirty water. They will have problems with
sanitation," Ms Quinn said.

The monthly food rations the Iraqis are dependent on from the UN last
only
two to three weeks and do not contain any protein, according to Ms
Quinn. A
UNICEF report which came out last August showed that 25 per cent of
children under five years in Iraq are malnourished and over 4,500 die
every
month as a result. Ms Quinn says she expects this year's UNICEF report
to
show an even higher rate of death among children.

Ms Quinn said hospitals were under-equipped with medicines and
facilities
and were overcrowded, with up to three people sharing some beds and
people
lying on floors in corridors. The sanitation and water systems were also

showing strain. The pillars supporting the main sewerage plant in
Baghdad
were crumbling and there were pools of stagnant water on the
litterstrewn
streets.

She said she visited schools where there was "no running water, no
windows,
no benches, holes in the roof, no clean water, no toilets, no books, the

playground under rubbish with stagnant water".

Long-term malnourishment, Ms Quinn said, was having an effect on
children's
development. "You could see it in the kids that were small for their
age,
in their reactions." All of the UNICEF staff Ms Quinn spoke to in Iraq
wanted the sanctions lifted.

UNICEF staff on the ground say that day in day out, you are dealing with

effects of the sanctions. You are dealing with no medicine for kids, you

are dealing with no food. You are dealing with a country which has been
brought to its knees."

Jas Kaminski adds: An estimated 100 million children suffering from the
ravages of poverty, war and AIDs are the focus of an 18-month campaign
announced in a report, Growing Up Alone: The Hidden Cost of Poverty,
launched yesterday by Unicef.

"The trilogy of tragedies which lead to children growing up alone
demands
that we act now", UNICEF UK executive director Mr David Bull said
yesterday in London.

The report looks into the physical and spiritual damage done to children

from being alone, which has not in itself been assessed before, UNICEF
says.