Death, Disease, and Malnutrition
--Each month 5,000 to 6,000 children die as a result of the sanctions. (WHO, 1998).
--In the heavily-populated southern and central parts of the country, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were 10 years ago. “If the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under five” from 1991 to 1998.” (UNICEF, 1999).
--Approximately 250 people die every day in Iraq due to the sanctions. (UNICEF, 1998).
--Seven years after the imposition of the blockade on the people of Iraq, more than 1.2 million people, including 750,000 children below the age of five, have died because of the scarcity of food and medicine. 32 percent of children under age 5, some 960,000 children, are chronically malnourished—a  rise of 72 percent since 1991. 23% are underweight - twice as high as the levels found in neighboring Jordan or Turkey. (UNICEF, 1997)
--More than 4,500 children under age 5 die every month in Iraq. (UNICEF, 1996)
--There has been a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio, diphtheria and measles. (UNICEF, 1993)

Health and Food Systems
--Government drug warehouses and pharmacies have few stocks of medicines and medical supplies. The consequences of this situation are causing a near-breakdown of the health care system, which is reeling under the pressure of being deprived of medicine, other basic supplies and spare parts. (World Health Organization, 1997)
--Sanctions are inhibiting the importation of spare parts, chemicals, and the means of transportation required to provide water and sanitation services to the civilian population of Iraq. ... What has become increasingly clear is that no significant movement towards food security can be achieved so long as the embargo remains in place. All vital contributors to food availability -- agricultural production, importation of foodstuffs, economic stability and income generation, are dependent on Iraq's ability to purchase and import those items vital to the survival of the civilian population. (UNICEF, 1995 )

Education
--One quarter of primary school age children are not in school at all. (UNICEF, 1997)
--“Iraqi school buildings are falling apart, and there is no money for school books or other
materials. So a generation of Iraqi children faces the threat of growing up with inadequate education.” (Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1998)
--A side effect of sanctions is the intellectual isolation in the scientific and medical community. This is due, in part, to the non-availability of journals, periodicals, and textbooks. (FAO 1993)
--The sanctions prohibit textbooks, paper, pencils, pens, ink, chairs, desks.

Economic and Social Effects
--The people have been squeezed into a precarious position by a combination of hyperinflation and collapse of household incomes. As a consequence, the number of beggars and street children have increased enormously (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 1995)

“The comprehensive sanctions against Iraq have long since ceased to be a moral tool of diplomacy, because they have inflicted indiscriminate and unacceptable suffering on the Iraqi people. … Political and military sanctions remain acceptable; comprehensive economic sanctions are not. … We cannot turn a deaf ear to the suffering of the Iraqi people or a blind eye to the moral obtuseness of current U.S. policy.”
--statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued by Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston and signed by 265 bishops, 1999.

 “The time has come to re-examine the intended goals and the actual effects of these sanctions. The first step should be to de-link the economic sanctions, which have been a complete failure, from the military sanctions, which have had a measured success. …We are simply asking you to look squarely at the economic sanctions, which have outlasted their political utility. They now serve only to extend the human suffering of the [Iraqi] population and carry out a policy that has driven religious leaders -- the moral conscience of our nation -- to acts of desperation.”
--Letter to President Clinton from U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and 42 other members of Congress, including Texas representatives Ciro Rodriguez, Eddie Bernice Johnson and Sheila Jackson Lee, 1998.

“This is genocide. Children are dying slowly and painfully. We call on the president of America, the vice president and the congressmen to come to Iraq and see the little children and Tony Blair, the U.K. government and Kofi Annan to come and to go to the cancer ward and give us an answer ... what was their crime?”
--Adolfo Perez-Esquivel, who opposed a military dictatorship in his native Argentina, and won the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize, 1999.

 “The embargo, through its perverse and its uncontrollable effects, is destroying the spirit of the Iraqi people.”
--Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 1998.

“The Cuban and Iraqi instances make it abundantly clear that economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health. Our professional ethic demands the defense of public health. Thus, as physicians, we have a moral imperative to call for the end of sanctions. Having found the cause, we must act to remove it. Continuing to allow our reason to sleep will produce more monsters.”
--New England Journal of Medicine editorial, April 24, 1997.

Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions (1977)
     (1) Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
     (2) It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies, and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

International Conference on Nutrition, World Declaration on Nutrition, FAO/WHO (1992)
     We recognize that access to nutritionally adequate and safe food is a right of each individual. We affirm...that food must not be used as a tool for political pressure.

UN General Assembly Resolution 44/215 (December 22, 1989)
     Economic measures as a means of political and economic coercion against developing countries: Calls upon the developed countries to refrain from exercising political coercion
through the application of economic instruments with the purpose of inducing changes in the economic or social systems, as well as in the domestic or foreign policies, of other countries; Reaffirms that developed countries should refrain from threatening or applying trade and financial restrictions, blockades, embargoes, and other economic sanctions,
incompatible with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations and in violation of
undertakings contracted multilaterally and bilaterally, against developing countries as a form of political and economic coercion that affects their political, economic, and social development.

Constitution of the World Health Organization (1946)
     The enjoyment of the highest standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic, or social condition.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
     Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, adopted by UN General Assembly (1974)
     [N]o state may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind.

International Terrorism, as defined in U.S. law (Title 18, 2331)
     --violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;
   --appear to be intended: (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
   --occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum.

War Crimes
   To be defined as a war crimes under the provision of Article 85 of the Additional Protocols I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, an act must include the following attributes:
** It must be willfully
** It must be a violation of relevant provisions of the Protocol
** It must cause death or serious injury to body or health
** It must make the civilian population (or individual civilians) the object of attack; and/or make an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects ("which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated" - Article 57, p.2(a)(iii)
 

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