UNICEF: 450% increase increase in child mortality rate in Iraq due to sanctions

A study prepared by UNICEF said that children's death rate in Iraq had doubled due to the sanctions imposed on Iraq since 1991.

The study, which was issued on Thursday in New York, as saying that the mortality rate among children under five in the central and southern parts of Iraq increased to 130 per thousand births up by more than 400% from the expected projection rate of 30 per 1000 live births in 1999, had the pre-war pattern of improvement had continued.

The areas covered by the study include the governorates of Dohouk, Erbil and Al-Suleimaniyah, and the study interviewed about 14,049 women. UN officials blame the economic sanctions on Iraq for this dramatic increase in child mortality rate.

UNICEF also recommended that the Iraqi Government urgently begin targeted nutrition programmes and -- together with the Security Council committee overseeing the sanctions against Baghdad -- give priority to contracts for supplies that will directly help children.

As a partial explanation for the findings, UNICEF's executive director Carlo Bellamy pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues, which said: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."