Sanctions take a chilling toll

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 re-evaluated. 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.