Recent information on the consequences of the Iraq war on civilians and
children only confirms a devastating picture of the situation. According
to an article in the medical magazine The Lancet, there has been an
excess of 100,000 civilians deaths since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The deaths have included a substantial number of children. Carol
Bellamy, UNICEF's Executive Director, has called the death of 34
children in recent bomb attacks "an unconscionable slaughter of innocents."
Many of those deaths have been the consequence of coalition forces'
actions. According to the authors of the study published in The Lancet,
there has been substantially more deaths in Iraq since the war began
that in the period immediately before the conflict. The killings of
dozens of children in Baghdad's recent bombings show, according to
UNICEF, "a disregard for innocent lives that recalled the recent
massacre of children in Beslan, Russia."
This is the third time that Iraqi children have been victims of war in
that country's recent history. The two conflicts previous to the present
one were the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s and the Gulf War in
1991, which caused considerable damage to Iraq's infrastructure. In
addition, the country has been under over 12 years of comprehensive
United Nations' sanctions.
Although after it was introduced in 1996 the Oil for Food Program
(OFFP), which allowed the Iraqi government to sell oil and use the
revenue to purchase humanitarian supplies, contributed to reduce the
impact of the sanctions, it had significant shortcomings. Among them was
Saddam Hussein's decision to use the funds for personal gain rather than
to improve the basic services' infrastructure in the country.
Previous to this last conflict, Iraqi children were already highly
vulnerable to disease and malnutrition. One in four children under five
years of age was chronically malnourished, and one in eight children
died before their fifth birthday. This was happening on a population
where almost half is under the age of 18.
A limited post-war nutritional assessment carried out by UNICEF in
Baghdad found that acute malnutrition has nearly doubled to what it was
before the war. That assessment also found that seven out of ten
children suffered from various degrees of diarrhea, which led to a loss
of nutrients and often to death if not properly treated. Following this
last war an already deteriorated water and sanitation system practically
collapsed, leading to loss and/or contamination of piped water and
greater susceptibility to contracting diarrhea.
It was estimated that 270,000 children born after the war had none of
the required immunizations and routine immunization services were all
but disrupted. In addition, the existent stock of vaccines became
useless as a result of the destruction of the cold-chain system.
Hundreds of thousands tons of raw sewage are still pumped into the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers every day. Because water cleaning chemicals
have been looted or destroyed, the quality of water being pumped into
the homes is extremely poor and leads to more frequent illness and
malnutrition among children.
As a consequence of all these factors, Iraq is the country that has
least progressed in reducing child mortality since 1990. In the 1990s,
the most significant increases in child mortality occurred in southern
and central Iraq, where under-five child mortality rose from 56 to 131
per 1,000 live births. Due to lack of security, many babies are now
delivered at home, and many mothers do not receive any pre-natal care.
In the main cities, every day children are killed or injured when in
contact with unexploded ordnance (UXO), land mines and other kinds of
live ammunition littering the country. In Baghdad alone there are
approximately 800 hazardous sites related to cluster bombs and dumped
ammunition.
The Iraq Education Survey, carried out by the Iraqi government with
support from UNICEF, describes how children educational opportunities
have been affected by the war. In the most affected governorates, more
than 70 percent of primary school buildings lack water service. The
survey shows that since March 2003, over 700 primary schools had been
damaged by bombing, more than 200 had been burned and over 3,000 had
been looted. After a year and a half of hostilities the suffering of
civilians seems to increase, rather than decrease. Even more poignantly,
that over half of the deaths caused by the occupation forces are women
and children is a severe indictment against this senseless war.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1030-23.htm
Dr. César Chelala, an international public health consultant, is a
co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award for an article on
human rights.
by Dr. César Chelala
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