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United Nations sanctions against Iraq were imposed by the United Nations in 1990 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and continued until the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. They were perhaps the toughest, most comprehensive sanctions in history, and have caused much controversy over the humanitarian impact, culminating with two senior UN representatives in Iraq resigning in protest of the sanctions.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Effects of the sanctions 3 Infant and child death rates 4 Oil for Food 5 The difficult road to lifting of sanctions 6 Footnotes 7 External links

On August 6, 1990 the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other items of humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the Security Council sanctions committee. After the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi sanctions were linked to removal of Weapons of mass destruction by Resolution 687.[1].

The United Nations economic sanctions were imposed at the urging of the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The New York Times stated: "By making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] would eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power" (Seattle-Post Intelligencer August 7, 2003, archived at: [2]). In as much as the economic sanctions were designed to topple Saddam they were a failure; however, the sanctions caused the death of between 400,000 and 800,000 Iraqi children (Seattle-Post Intelligencer August 7, 2003, archived at: [3]; Hartford Courant, October 23, 2000, [4]).

Much of Iraq’s economic infrastructure was damaged from lack of resources due to the sanctions. Iraq's ability for aggression was also destroyed. The purpose was to coerce the Iraqi government to cooperate with the United Nations, to initiate an improvement in Iraq's previously aggressive foreign policy, and reduce human rights abuses.

Critics of the sanctions say that over a million Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of them, [5] although other researchers concluded that the total was lower. [6] [7] [8] UNICEF announced that 500,000 child deaths have occurred as a result of the sanctions.[9] The sanctions resulted in high rates of malnutrition, lack of medical supplies, and diseases from lack of clean water. Chlorine, was desperately needed to disinfect water supplies, but it was banned from the country due to the potential that it may be used as part of a chemical weapon. On May 10, 1996, Madeleine Albright (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations at the time) appeared on 60 Minutes and was confronted with statistics of half a million children under five having died as a result of the sanctions. She replied "we think the price is worth it", [10] though she later described her comment as "stupid."[11]

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"^[1] However Sophie Boukhari an UNESCO Courier journalist reports that "Some legal experts are sceptical about or even against using such terminology." and quotes Mario Bettati (who invented the notion of "the right of humanitarian intervention") "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." and reports that William Bourdon the secretary-general of International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said "one of the key elements of a crime against humanity and of genocide is intent. The embargo wasn’t imposed because the United States and Britain wanted children to die. If you think so, you have to prove it."^[2]

Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, subsequently also resigned in protest. Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq, followed them. According to von Sponeck, the sanctions restricted Iraqis to living on $100 each of imports per year.^{[citation needed]}

A May 25, 2000 BBC article^[3] 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.^[4][5]

The 2000 BBC article reported that in south and central Iraq, infant mortality rate between 1994 and 1999 had inclined 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.

The 2000 BBC article also reported, "However, it found that infant and child mortality in the autonomous, mainly Kurd region in the North of the country, has actually fallen, perhaps reflecting the more favourable distribution of aid in that area."

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."

Main article: Oil-for-Food Programme

As the sanctions faced mounting criticism of its humanitarian impacts, several UN resolutions were introduced that allowed Iraq to trade its oil for goods such as food and medicines. The earliest of these resolutions were introduced in 1991.

UN Resolution 706 of 15 August 1991 was introduced to allow the sale of Iraqi oil in exchange for food. (PDF of resolution 706)

UN Resolution 712 of 19 September 1991 confirmed that Iraq could sell up to $1.6 billion US in oil to fund an Oil For Food program. (PDF of Resolution 712)

Iraq was in 1996 allowed under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme (under Security Council Resolution 986) to export $5.2 billion (USD) of oil every 6 months with which to purchase items needed to sustain the civilian population. After an initial refusal, Iraq signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in May 1996 for arrangements for the implementation of that resolution to be taken. The Oil-for-Food Programme started in October 1997, and the first shipments of food arrived in March 1998. While improving the conditions of the population, Denis Halliday who oversaw the programme believed it inadequate to compensate for the adverse humanitarian impacts of the sanctions.

Thirty percent of the proceeds were redirected to a Gulf War reparations account.

In 2004/5 the Programme became the subject of major media attention over corruption, as Iraq had systematically sold allocations of oil at below-market prices in return for some of the proceeds from the resale outside the scope of the programme. Individuals and companies from dozens of countries were implicated.

While UN resolutions subsequent to the cessation of hostilities during the Gulf War imposed several requisite responsibilities on Iraq for the removal of sanctions, the largest focus remained on the regime's development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and in particular its laggard participation in the UNSCOM-led disarmament process required of it. The goal of several western governments had been that the disruptive effects of war and sanction would lead to a critical situation in which Iraqis would in some way effect "regime change", a removal of Saddam Hussein and his closest allies from power.

Hussein was at this point widely seen as a tyrant whose nominal cooperation concealed malign aims. With him in power, there was a general inclination to be skeptical about whether Iraq would disarm, and about whether it would be open and cooperative about the inspection process, particularly after revelations of post-war concealment forced a reevaluation of the extent of the country's biological weapons program. [12] Hussein may have considered the many governments' displeasure with him, but particularly that of two veto-wielding UNSC members, the United States and United Kingdom (both of which took the hardest lines on Iraq), as a no-win situation and disincentive to cooperation in the process. [13].

Additionally, UNSCOM had allegedly been infiltrated by British and American spies for purposes other than determining if Iraq possessed WMDs. [14] [15] Former inspector Scott Ritter was a prominent source of these charges. While not agreeing with Ritter fully, former UNSCOM chief inspector David Kay said "the longer it continued, the more the intelligence agencies would, often for very legitimate reasons, decide that they had to use the access they got through cooperation with UNSCOM to carry out their missions."[16] [17].

Saddam, who portrayed all this as a violation of Iraq's territorial sovereignty, became less cooperative and more obstructive of UNSCOM activities as the years wore on, and refused access for several years beginning in August 1998. Ultimately Saddam condemned the US for enforcing the sanctions through the UN and demanded nothing less than unconditional lifting of all sanctions on its country, including the weapons sanctions. The US and UN refused to do so out of concern that Saddam's regime would rebuild its once-powerful military and renew its WMD programs with the trade revenues. Renewed pressure in 2002 led to the entry of UNMOVIC, which received some degree of cooperation but failed to declare Iraq's disarmament immediately prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for which it was withdrawn and became inactive in Iraq.

The sanctions regime was finally ended on May 22, 2003 (with certain arms-related exceptions) by paragraph 10 of UNSC, after approximately 1.5 million people had died.Resolution 1483. [18]

1. ^ John Pilger on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s New Statesman, 4 October 2004
2. ^ Sophie Boukhari Embargo against Iraq: Crime and punishment UNESCO website.
3. ^ "Child death rate doubles in Iraq". BBC. May 25, 2000.
4. ^ "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq". By Ali, M.;Shah, I. The Lancet. May 2000. Vol: 355, Pages: 1851-1858.
5. ^ Centre for Population Studies. DFID Reproductive Health Work Programme. Lists bibliographic details for article, "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq".

• Council on Foreign Relations, May 23 2003, "Iraq: U.N. Sanctions"
• U.S. Department of State, Released September 13, 1999 (updated 2/23/00), "Saddam Hussein's Iraq"
• The Daily Telegraph, 25 May 2003, "Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade"
• In These Times, Christopher Hayes, March 6, 2006, "Were Sanctions Worth the Price?"

• John Pilger, New Statesman, 4 October 2004, on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s
• David Edwards, Zmag, 3 March 2000, Interview with Denis Halliday
• John Pilger, Impact of Iraq sanctions
• Since 1998, EPIC was the political arm of the anti-sanctions movement in the U.S., The Education for Peace in Iraq Center
• IRIN News, news agency of the UN OCHA agency, looks again at the figures (August 2005): IRAQ: Child mortality rates finally dropping
• Wright, Steven. The United States and Persian Gulf Security: The Foundations of the War on Terror, Ithaca Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0863723216