(Which was one of the more huamne and persuasive arguments in favor of the war, I admit.)
UN Monitor: War on Iraq Has Doubled Malnutrition Among Iraqi Children
GENEVA -- The war in Iraq and its aftermath have almost doubled malnutrition rates among Iraqi children, a UN specialist on hunger has told the world's major human rights body.
Acute malnutrition rates among Iraqi children under five rose late last year to 7.7 per cent from four per cent after the ouster of President Saddam Hussein in April 2003, said Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.
Malnutrition, which is exacerbated by a lack of clean water and inadequate sanitation, is a major child-killer in poor countries. Children who manage to survive are usually physically and mentally impaired for the rest of their lives and more vulnerable to disease.
Acute malnutrition signifies a child is actually wasting away.
The situation facing Iraqi youngsters is "a result of the war led by coalition forces," said Ziegler, a Swiss sociology professor and former legislator whose previous targets have included Swiss banks, China, Brazil and Israeli treatment of Palestinians.
Overall, more than one-quarter of Iraqi children don't have enough to eat, Ziegler told a meeting of the 53-country commission, the top UN rights watchdog, which is halfway through its annual six-week session.
The U.S. delegation and other coalition countries did not respond to the report.
Ziegler's criticism Wednesday was in line with previous studies of the food crisis in Iraq since the U.S.-led war two years ago.
In November, the Norwegian-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science released a report that found malnutrition had reached 7.7 per cent among Iraqi children between the ages of six months and five years.
Officials from the institute, which conducted a survey with the UN Development Program and Iraq's Central office for Statistics and Information Technology, said the Iraqi malnutrition rate is similar to the level in some hard-hit African countries.
Late last year, Carol Bellamy, head of the UN children's agency UNICEF, said there was little relief workers could do to ease the plight of Iraqi children because fighting hampers or prevents most aid operations in the country. UNICEF officials were not immediately available to say if the situation had changed in recent months.
The insurgency has led to problems moving adequate supplies of food into hot spots, particularly in and around Sunni Muslim areas to the north and west of Baghdad.
Ziegler also cited an October 2004 U.S. study that estimated as many as 100,000 more Iraqis - many of them women and children - had died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq than would normally have died.
The authors of the report in the British medical journal the Lancet - researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad - conceded their data were of "limited precision," because they depended on the accuracy of household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqi, most of them doctors.
― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Friday, 1 April 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)
UN Rights Expert Charges US Using Food Access as Military Tactic
GENEVA -- A UN human rights expert sharply condemned the invasion of Iraq and the global anti-terror drive, accusing the US-led coalition of using food deprivation as a military tactic and of sapping efforts to fight hunger in the world. "The situation of the right to food in Iraq is of serious concern," the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said in a report to the UN human rights commission.
The report also highlighted "widespread concerns about the continued lack of access to clean drinking water" and allegations by British campaigners that water sources were deliberately cut off by coalition forces.
"Those are the allegations, but what is proven is that at Fallujah, denial, the blockade imposed on food and the destruction of water reservoirs was used as weapon of war," Ziegler told journalists.
He insisted that the practice was a "clear violation" of the Geneva Conventions and delivered a firm condemnation of any attempt to deny food or water supplies.
The UN expert insisted he was not judging the legitimacy of the invasion or the tactics used by military forces.
"I am simply maintaining a firm condemnation, very firm, of the humanitarian consequences of this strategy and the military tactics applied since March 2003 by the occupying forces," he said.
Citing previous studies reported last year, the report said that "acute malnutrition amongst Iraqi children under the age of five has almost doubled from four percent to 7.7 percent," since Saddam Hussein was toppled.
A US official said Ziegler's comments were "unfortunate."
"First he has not visited Iraq, secondly he's wrong," said US ambassador Kevin Moley.
Moley said the rise in malnutrition rates began in 2002 and 2003 under Saddam Hussein's regime, and the rates were still lower in Iraq than "throughout the Arab world."
"He's taking some information that in itself is difficult to validate and juxtaposing is own views which are widely known about the war in Iraq and suggesting the two are linked," he told journalists.
"Vaccination rates, food aid have improved dramatically since the fall of Saddam Hussein," the US envoy added.
Overall efforts to tackle terror groups and the invasion of Iraq had also drained precious resources away from fighting hunger in poor countries when they should be doing the opposite, the UN expert said.
The wide-ranging report on global food rights also warned that more people could die as aid programmes in crisis areas, notably in Africa, were obliged to cut down food deliveries.
The World Food Programme had cut food rations by about one third in February 2004, bringing them "drastically under" international minimum nutritional standards, according to Ziegler.
"This will bring higher mortality in the camps, because aid is being redirected towards the 'War against Terror.' This is unacceptable," he added.
Ziegler's report said the resources spent on "the international 'Alliance against Hunger' remain pitiful, when compared to the billions of dollars spent on the 'War against Terror.'"
"The amount of aid being provided for development and famine relief is falling, as money is redirected towards strengthening national security and the fight against terrorism."
"Yet the fight against terrorism should incorporate efforts to reduce hunger, poverty and inequality," it added.
Ziegler urged authorities in Iraq to ensure that reconstruction was carried out "in ways that address chronic malnourishment and do not undermine the future food security of the Iraqi people."
― RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Friday, 1 April 2005 16:33 (twenty years ago)