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Re:Economic Sanctions Iraq



I would like to thank each one of you who helps to inform people about the
impact of the economic sanctions on Iraq. In 1991/1992  I was UNICEF's
Health Coordinator in Baghdad.

    "....Witnessing the effects of the sanctions gave me many sleepless
nights and broke my heart. Usually after a war, after working day and night,
some normality is slowly re-established, and things improve and start to
function again, but not then in Iraq. This was the fifth time I had worked
after or during a war, and I was more shocked than ever before. This
absolutely mad, man made disaster seemed endless and hopeless....
    The impact of the Gulf War on child health in Iraq was and is beyond
belief. It is simply another war crime.....
    I asked myself many times where do the rights of children fit in here?
Why should any, but especially children under the age of five, suffer so
much and die in such numbers? Sadly, I had to witness ever repeated scenes
of children dying as I walked through hospital wards....
    Most families had forgotten what a chicken or any other type of meat
tasted like. Even the food of the poor, dates and lentils, became
unaffordable...
    My worried conscience is not helped by repeatedly hearing from
politicians and reading newspaper editorials that it is sad, but it is the
Iraqi leadership's fault and not ours and that the leadership is using the
children as propaganda. I will never accept that children and their mothers
have to be punished for the deemed wrongs of their nation's government. I
believe that only the guilty should be punished. Two wrongs don't make a
right...."

These are extracts from my recently published book 'Between Despair and
Hope. Windows on my Middle East Journey 1967-1992'. The Radcliffe Press.
London and New York 1998.

The situation for the Iraqi people has only worsened.

With regards to all ----------- Margarita Skinner.


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