The Children Are Dying—Exposing the Truth of the UN Sanctions Against Iraq

Reviewed by Rania Masri, Iraq Action Coalition, 23 May 1996

The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq: The Children Are Dying
Featuring: Reports by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Ramsey Clark, and an Appeal by World Leaders to the US Government and the UN Security Council: End the Use of Sanctions as a Weapon of War.
ISBN 0-89567-127-1

Is the killing of children moral? Can you justify the killing of thousands of infants every week and the starvation of a population of twenty million in order to achieve a political gain? The mere question, in and of itself, is a reflection of a bankrupt morality. And yet, for more than five years now, the effectiveness of the sanctions against the 20 million people of Iraq has been discussed in the absence of any morality about its lethality. How many more children must die?

The mainstream media has been silent, ignoring the greatest crime committed by the United Nations against a nation. Silence is acceptance, complicity in the face of a genocide—a quiet Holocaust. This silence has now been broken.

Sanctions are war. They are the most brutal form of war because they punish an entire population, targeting children, the future, most of all. Sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction. So begins The Children Are Dying, a book that reveals the truth behind the sanctions against the people of Iraq.

More than half a million children under the age of five have died in Iraq as a direct consequence of the sanctions, as stated in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 1995 report published in full in The Children Are Dying. Painless sanctions are a contradiction in terms, and child deaths especially in the poor and vulnerable are an inevitable consequence of economic pain, writes Peter Pellet, the team leader of the UN/FAO Mission to Iraq. Having seen the effects of the embargo in Iraq both in 1993 and the summer of 1995 as well as comparing this and the prewar situation, malnutrition, beggars, crime, street children, a collapsed health care system, hyperinflation, and widespread suffering are the new realities.

In addition to the 1995 UN FAO report that evaluates the food and nutrition situation in Iraq, The Children Are Dying includes a photographic documentary, an international appeal against the use of such sanctions, supporting documents and articles, and a listing of international organizations working to end the blockade on Iraq. A new video, The Children Are Dying has been released as a companion to the book. The video records Ramsey Clarks 1996 visit to hospitals, schools, and neighborhoods in Iraq, and includes interviews with members of the UN FAO team.

The Children Are Dying boldly presents the cruel consequences of the U.S.-led blockade against an entire people. More than 6,000 children under the age of five and 6,000 persons five years of age or older died in January 1996 as a direct result of these sanctions, states Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General in The Children Are Dying.

More than two million children are suffering from severe malnutrition because of this blockade. According to conservative estimates, more than one million people, most of them children, have died in Iraq because of the sanctions. Four million people are now starving to death in Iraq. How can the United Nations, and all who support this slow massacre, continue to speak in the name of humanity and justice while they inflict hunger, disease, and death upon millions of men, women and children in Iraq?

And why? Although the Iraqi armed forces withdrew from Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government restored, and the Iraqi army destroyed—the Iraqi people continue to be ruthlessly punished. Their government has complied with the UN Resolutions, though the resolutions violate numerous international laws and standards. As Dr. Safia Safwat explains in the book, no matter what Iraq does in fulfillment of its obligations under the Security Council resolutions, the unjust sentence passed by the Council to starve the people of Iraq and deny them the right to life continues, simply because this is the will of certain influential governments in the Council.

Regardless of why , the Iraqi people have now endured international isolation and a suffocating trade embargo for nearly six years. The sanctions have been a quiet war against the people of Iraq, a war twenty-six times more lethal than the atomic bombing of Nagasaki ... and the genocide continues. The sanctions against the Iraqi people have already taken the lives of more than one million innocent people, most of whom are children, and endangers the physical and mental development of millions of children.

The Children Are Dying reveals not only the truth that has been hidden, but serves to awaken the conscience and reinforce the spirit of humanity. The book is a reminder, in the midst of ugliness, of the refusal to silence ones morality—and thus of the strength of integrity. The book is a tool in the struggle to end the terrible suffering in Iraq; it describes the work of international organizations dedicated to the lifting of the sanctions against Iraq and thus the means by which an individual can contribute to the worldwide efforts for ending the sanctions.

We are not helpless in the face of this tragedy; our passive acceptance, however, contributes to the misery and oppression imposed upon the Iraqi people, and amounts to complicity in the crimes against humanity committed by the United Nations. We must stop this ongoing genocide. The voice of humanity must be louder than the voice of economic power and greed.