Last week we wrote to encourage vigorous refutation of any notions that UN reports about suffering and death in Iraq were corrupt. Below is a 150 word letter to the editor. We ask that you take 5 to 10 minutes to send the follwing letter (or a modified version of it) to two or three papers in your area.

Thanks and sincerely,
Voices in the Wilderness

Dear Editor,

As the investigation into UN Oil-for-Food program kickbacks continues, it may be politically expedient to blame the appalling reports of children dying during the 1990’s on Iraqi propaganda, but it is also the worst kind of lazy and irresponsible journalism. The cruel effects of the economic embargo are well documented, from its earliest days when a team of Harvard-sponsored physicians visited Iraq just after the first Gulf War, to the 1999 UNICEF statistical analysis which reported that a half million Iraqi children had died unnecessarily as a direct result of economic sanctions. Add to this the sharp rise in chronic and severe malnutrition among Iraqi children during that time, and the inability of Iraqi hospitals to obtain sufficient antibiotics, childhood cancer drugs, and all manner of other medications and equipment, and a truer picture of the embargo begins to emerge. The legacy of this embargo weighs heavily on Iraqi society today. The dead and the living in Iraq demand that we tell their story truthfully and intelligently, despite the inconvenient political consequences.

Printable PDF Version

For more information regardin Oli-for-Food and the Economic Sanction against Iraq please see the following…

• UNsanctioned Suffering: A Human Rights Assessment of UnitedNations Sanctions on Iraq
• Health and Welfare in Iraq After the Gulf Crisis: An In-Depth Assessment
• The Ahtisaari Report, 20 March 1991
• The Economic Sanctions section here on our website