Humanitarian Groups Warn Conflict a Potential Catastrophe for Iraqi Children

By Alan L. Heil Jr.

“They have guns and bombs and the air will be cold and hot and we will burn very much.”

—Assem, 5 years old

“I would like to send a message to President Bush: ‘A lot of Iraqi children will die. You will see it on TV and you will regret [it].’” —Aesar, 10 years old

“I do not expect them to kill so many. It is not acceptable. Maybe the American people have some sympathy with us since we are peaceful and do not want to attack them.”

—Shahad, 11 years old

Fear among Iraqi children is pervasive amid talk of a war that could alter their lives and those of their families in unimaginable and terrible ways for years to come.

This is the finding of the International Study Team, a group of multidisciplinary experts in health, nutrition, food security, child psychology, and international humanitarian law. During a week-long field survey in late January, the non-governmental group sampled views of the country’s 13 million youngsters 18 years and younger. The specialists, including internationally-known child psychologists Magne Raundalen and Atle Dyrgrov, spoke with children in schools and often in their own homes, without Iraqi government minders present. Based on their interviews of children and their parents in more than a hundred households in Baghdad, Basra and Kerbala, the Study Team’s report is the most comprehensive on-site survey of the possible impact of war on children that has been conducted in Iraq. Entitled Our Common Responsibility, it is available at <http://www.warchild.ca/docs/final_report_report_january_29v1.0.pdf>.

“Should war occur,” the Study Team’s report concludes, “the world can expect a grave humanitarian disaster, with children even more vulnerable than they were in the 1991 Gulf war. Iraqi children are at grave risk of starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma. While it is impossible to predict both the nature of any war and the number of any deaths or injuries, casualties among children will be in the thousands, probably the tens of thousands, and possibly in the hundreds of thousands.”

Tragic Unintended Consequences

The report notes that:

•the death rate of Iraqi children under five years of age already is two and a half times greater than it was in 1990;

•seven out of 10 of children’s deaths are caused by diarrheal and respiratory diseases;

•health services have declined precipitously in the last 13 years due to sanctions and an exodus of trained health professionals from Iraq;

•it is unlikely most hospitals would be able to function for more than a month in the event of hostilities in Iraq, where the Ministry of Health’s annual budget today is $20 million, compared with $450 million in 1989;

•Iraq has only one month’s supply of surplus food, and a war’s interruption of the government’s highly efficient distribution system could quickly affect far more children than the half-million who are now acutely undernourished or underweight;

•Iraq’s electricity, water and sanitation systems, badly damaged during the 1991 Gulf war, never fully recovered and now operate at a fraction of their pre-war state. Further destruction of these systems during a second Gulf war would have catastrophic effects on the health and well-being of all Iraqi civilians, especially children;

•only 60 percent of Iraq’s population has access to potable, clean water;

•trauma among children and refugees or displaced families within the country is widespread. Lifelong mental suffering is likely. As 13-year-old Hadeel told the Study Team: “I think every hour that something bad will happen to me.”

Estimates by the International Study Team, MedAct, the United Nations, and Refugees International say that as many as a million and a half people could be forced from their homes or flee for safety in the event of hostilities lasting two to three months. This would be in addition to the one million people already driven out by Saddam Hussain’s policy of subduing recalcitrant populations such as Kurds and Shi’i.

According to the Associated Press, Iraq most recently has begun expelling families from a 20-mile wide rural area between the autonomous Kurdish north and the rest of the country (see box). This, AP reports, is leading to speculation that Saddam is creating a buffer zone to defend against a U.S. or coalition invasion.

Dr. Curtis Doebbler of Washington, DC, a contributor to the International Study Team report, cites three basic principles of international law in wartime protecting children: 1) children must not be harmed, 2) children must be given special protection, and 3) facilities essential to their survival must not be attacked. “These three principles,” Dr. Doebbler notes, “are based on treaties and customary international law to which both the United States and Iraqare bound, and thus are binding on both states in the event of war.”

The Study Team concludes: “Once again, as the international community contemplates the necessity of war with Iraq, children have been left out of focus. Their plight has been overtaken by the politics of the moment and the lack of consensus on the best way forward.”

The Team urges the Security Council to consider the best interests of the child when considering alternatives to the use of force to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. “Equally,” it adds, “we remind the Iraqi government of its obligations under international law to fully safeguard the rights of Iraqi children and, as a member of the United Nations, to implement the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a verifiable end to existing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs.”

Humanitarian Consequences of War?

How prepared is the international community to offer humanitarian aid during or after a war in Iraq? The most significant concern is that, while there recently has been a rapid and massive military deployment in the Gulf region, there has been less planning and pre-positioning for a humanitarian response in the event of war. The reason for this, the Study Team believes, is that no donor government or U.N agency wants to prejudge the diplomatic efforts and give the impression that war is inevitable.

Nonetheless, U.N. agencies and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations have met in Geneva, and in-country with representatives of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, to share information and begin to identify roles each could play if a massive relief effort is needed. UNICEF and CARE would focus on water and sanitation, the World Health Organization would handle medical emergencies and disease control, and the World Food Program (WFP) would create a postwar emergency feeding network. Logistics and communications would be the responsibility of the United Nations Development Program.

According to Joel R. Charny, Refugees International vice president for policy, however, “preparations for the humanitarian consequences of war in Iraq [on refugees and displaced people] are woefully inadequate.”

Iraq’s neighbors, he says, will be hard pressed to accept the one million refugees projected in the event of a ground war lasting two or three months. Charny notes that Iran, which still hosts two and a half million Afghan refugees, has prepared refugee camps along the Iran-Iraq frontier which could house about 200,000 people, but feels it cannot accommodate more than that.

Charny’s policy paper, Avoiding a Humanitarian Catastrophe in Iraq, urges the U.S. to issue a declassified version of its humanitarian plan quickly, to help the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, Congress and others in coordinating relief and reconstruction work. He recommends that, in the event of war, Washington commit publicly to respect its obligations under international humanitarian law—particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention covering the responsibilities of an occupying power.

The U.S., Charny suggests, should clearly define what humanitarian tasks its military will perform and the assistance NGOs and contractors should undertake. Refugees International says the U.S. also should provide—#nd urge other countries to provide—money necessary for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the WFP to immediately pursue resettlement and feeding tasks. These include a continuation of food distribution to 16 million Iraqis dependent until now on the oil-for-food program. Finally, Charny states, restoring law and order and preventing ethnic violence will be crucial to assistance efforts and reconstruction.

Refugees International president and former Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon sums it up well: “No matter how complex the humanitarian challenges, they must be addressed as military plans are made. The humanitarian costs are a necessary part of the calculus of war, and the United States must take the lead in addressing them. Preparing to save the people of Iraq is at least as important as planning to remove the country’s president. Avoiding a humanitarian crisis would make it easier to start the long process” of rebuilding Iraq.

Alan L. Heil Jr. is a former deputy director of the Voice of America who served as its Middle East correspondent from 1968 to 1971.

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Tears of Travail on the Eve of War

AP writer Barzou Daragahi recently visited the buffer zone to see firsthand the impact of the Iraqi clearance operation. Goli Gerdi Amin, 40, and her five children lived in Makhshooma, 15 miles south of Irbil. They herded sheep and goats and raised crops there. Amin said five Iraqi soldiers suddenly appeared at her home on Jan. 16, just before the evening call to prayer, and ordered everyone to leave immediately for the city of Kirkuk, because their farm lay within the no-man’s land that separates Kurdish and Baghdad-controlled Iraq. “The commander was very cruel with us,” Amin’s 18-year-old son recalled. “My mother began to cry. She has been crying ever since.”

The family now lives in a rudimentary city flat which it rents for $12 a month.

—A.L.H.