The Impact of the UN Sanctions on the People of Iraq

Abstract

The impact of the sanctions regime imposed on Iraq by the member states of the United Nations Security Council since 1990 has many facets. The horrifying human face of malnutrition and death has, quite rightly, been given greatest media and other exposure, but other forms of damage are also severely felt. This article intends briefly to explore some aspects of the impact in an attempt to show a somewhat wider picture of the sanctions catastrophe. While the catastrophe is a thing of the present, it has potentially lasting consequences for the future, not only for the Iraqi people, but for the peace and well-being of the Arab region and the world as a whole.

The effect of violent conflict on calorie consumption and dietary quality in Iraq

“…Subsequently, the UN imposed on Iraq one of the harshest embargos in modern history, one whose sanctions, by initially including food items, not only prevented the import of key agricultural inputs but hindered the global trade in food on which Iraq now became heavily dependent. These sanctions, which disrupted every aspect of Iraqi life (Halliday, 1999; Santisteban, 2005), led to severe food price inflation (Field, 1993), prompting the government's introduction of the still operative Public Distribution System (PDS), a food rationing scheme designed to guarantee sufficient caloric consumption to the entire population.…”

The Violence of Non-Violence: A Systematic Mixed-Studies Review on the Health Effects of Sanctions

“…As the number of peer-reviewed articles, gray literature, and human rights reports addressing the health effects of sanctions has increased in the past decade, these effects have been exposed: They include direct effects such as higher infant mortality and barriers to lifesaving medicine, as well as indirect effects through the impact of sanctions on the social determinants of health-poverty, unemployment, and food shortages, or combinations of all of these, and more. [3][4][5][6][7][8] A few salient cases compellingly illustrate the health impact of sanctions: Sanctions imposed over the course of a still ongoing, 70-year-long "forgotten" war have devastated the health of North Koreans, straining the government's ability to meet the population's basic human needs, including access to food and to life-saving medical services and supplies. 9,10 Similarly, more than 60 years of U.S. sanctions on Cuba have brought about extraordinary suffering on the Cuban people.…”

“…As the number of peer-reviewed articles, gray literature, and human rights reports addressing the health effects of sanctions has increased in the past decade, these effects have been exposed: They include direct effects such as higher infant mortality and barriers to lifesaving medicine, as well as indirect effects through the impact of sanctions on the social determinants of health—poverty, unemployment, and food shortages, or combinations of all of these, and more. 3 – 8 …”