The UN sanctions are causing unnecessary hardship in Iraq

by Niall Andrews

The case for lifting the vast majority of UN sanctions
currently imposed against Iraq is compelling. It is
now 10 years since the United Nations first imposed
sanctions against the Iraqi government.

This was in direct retaliation for the invasion of
Kuwait by the forces of Saddam Hussein. There was
widespread global support in 1990 for tough measures
to be imposed against the Iraqi government. Dialogue
alone was not going to liberate Kuwait and return the
semblance of stability to the region.

One of the first measures to be passed by the United
Nations on August 6th, 1990, was known as resolution
661. This initiated the ban on exports of technical
and scientific books to Iraq by third countries. Put
in more stark terms, it started the process of cutting
off new medical information.

The last 10 years have witnessed a deterioration in
the standard of the health services in Iraq that
beggars belief. The infrastructure of the 130
hospitals in the country is simply collapsing. These
hospitals have not received the necessary repairs or
maintenance so as to be in a position to provide even
an adequate standard of healthcare. In some Iraqi
hospitals, raw sewage is dripping into operating
theatres.

UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red
Cross have been able to provide the outside world with
more chilling statistics about the effect of the UN
sanctions regime in Iraq:

Infant mortality has doubled in the country.

Some 500,000 children have died in Iraq since the Gulf
War.

A third of all children under the age of five have
serious malnutrition.

There will be little change in these chilling
statistics of human suffering as long as UN sanctions
are still in operation. The basic infrastructure needs
of the country will have to be substantially improved
if we are to reverse the social and economic decline.
Basic water and sanitation services need to be
urgently upgraded. Half of the rural population in
Iraq do not have access to any adequate supplies of
clean drinking water.

If UN sanctions were designed to bring the Iraqi
government to heel on disputed outstanding
international matters, they have not succeeded in that
objective. They have led to the collapse of the whole
infrastructure of the country, which will take decades
to rebuild. They have forced unemployment to rise to
60 per cent.

UN sanctions have hit at the most vulnerable in Iraqi
society. This includes children, young people,
pregnant women, the elderly and people with chronic
diseases.

There is a growing international concern that the
sanctions regime against Iraq must be completely
reevaluated. I do not want to see the Iraqi government
being given an opportunity to rebuild its armed
forces. The track record of this government is wholly
belligerent, to say the least.

However, the UN food for oil programme has not
improved the humanitarian problems in the country. It
has not halted the collapse of the health system and
the deterioration of water supplies, which together
pose one of the gravest threats to the health and
well-being of the civilian population.

I met many civilian and NGO groupings in Iraq during
my seven-day political visit to the country. I also
met Iraqi Foreign Minister Mr Tariq Aziz, who sought
the support of the three MEPS on the delegation for a
lifting of UN sanctions.

I supported the request that the vast majority of
these sanctions should be abolished as soon as
possible. I support this political position, not as a
means to bolster the regime of the Iraqi government,
but as an international mechanism to help the weakest
in Iraqi society.

I intend to open up a full round of discussions with
the European Commission and with all the political
groups in the European Parliament on this matter. It
is an imperative that a consensus is built up in
Europe that many of the UN sanctions in place against
the Iraqi Government be rescinded.

EU decision-makers have a moral obligation to force
progress on this issue - before the human suffering in
Iraq reaches even more calamitous heights.

Niall Andrews has been an MEP representing Dublin
since 1984.