Do you believe we (the U.S.) are guilty of ...

1. Introduction The United Nations Security Council has maintained compre-hensive economic sanctions on Iraq since August 6, 1990. The international community increasingly views the sanctions as illegitimate and punitive, because of well-documented humanitarian suffering in Iraq and widespread doubts about the sanctions’ effectiveness and their legal basis under international humanitarian and human rights law.

2. A Flawed Policy In the early 1990s, many policy makers saw comprehensive economic sanctions, imposed under Resolution 687, as an ethical and non-violent policy tool. Though Iraq sanctions produced some significant disarmament results, they failed to achieve all their policy goals and they have deeply harmed powerless and vulnerable Iraqi citizens. The Security Council implicitly accepts such a negative assessment, since it no longer uses comprehensive economic sanctions in other security crises.

3. Warnings of Civilian Harm Civilian suffering in Iraq is not an unexpected collateral effect, but a predictable result of the sanctions policy. Security Council members have received warnings of the humanitarian emergency in Iraq and the damage done by sanctions since shortly after the Gulf War. Warnings have come from three Secretary Generals, many UN officials and agencies including UNICEF, WHO and WFP, and two Humanitarian Coordinators who have resigned in protest. A Select Committee of the UK House of Commons offered a very negative judgment as well.

4. Causes of Suffering Sanctions are not the sole cause of human suffering in Iraq. The government of Iraq bears a heavy burden of responsibility due to the wars it has started, its lack of cooperation with the Security Council, its domestic repression, and its failure to use limited resources fairly. However, the UN Security Council shares responsibility for the humanitarian crisis. The United States and the United Kingdom, who use their veto power to prolong the sanctions, bear special responsibility for the UN action. No-fly zones, periodic military attacks, and threats of regime-change block peaceful outcomes, as do vilification of Saddam Hussein, pro-sanctions propaganda, and other politicization of the crisis. Though real concerns about Iraq’s security threat undoubtedly are legitimate, commercial interests, especially control over Iraq’s oil resources, appear to be a driving force behind much of the policy making.

<http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cahier/irak/savethechildren2002>

A grave and systematic violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms is being carried out against the entire population of Iraq, in form and dimensions without precedent. The most basic right, the right to life, is being denied in fact to 18 million people by the continuation of the sanctions policy, implemented through the United Nations Security Council. That such a policy be carried out on the basis of decisions made by a U.N. organ is unprecedented in the history of the U.N., as it involves a total boycott, following the deliberate destruction of Iraq's infrastructure. A further special feature of this case is that the violation is being carried out not by a national government, but by an intergovernmental body against the population of a member state of the U.N.

The International Progress Organization (I.P.O.) presents this memorandum within the framework of resolution 1235 (XLII) of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (1479th plenary meeting, 6 June 1967) on the Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms ... in all countries. The most egregious example of violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms committed through the sanctions policy against Iraq is constituted by the fact that the population is being deprived of food, water and medicine required to keep it alive. According to the July 1991 report issued by the inter-agency task force led by the U.N. Secretary General’s Executive Delegate, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, and composed of experts from UNICEF, WHO, FAO, WFP, UNHCR, UNDP and others, "the impact of the sanctions had been, and remains, very substantial on the economy and living conditions of its civilian population." Specifically, the report details that "damage to water treatment plants and the inability to obtain needed spare parts have cut off an estimated two and one half million Iraqis from the government system they relied upon before the war." Those who still receive water "are now provided on average with 1/4 the pre-war amount per day," much of it "of doubtful quality." As a result of the destruction of the sewage system, "raw sewage (is) now flowing in some city streets and into the rivers. Diarrhoeal diseases, thought to be caused by water and sewage problems, are now at four times the level of a year ago. The country is already experiencing outbreaks of typhoid and cholera."

Due to the lack of supplies, electricity, water and medicines, according to the same report, the health system is hamstrung. Iraq used to import up to $500 million a year for medicines and medical supplies, which it has not been able to receive since August 1990 due to the embargo. The report stresses that, since humanitarian agencies lack the financial means to meet this demand, "mechanisms need to be urgently established for the country to procure its own medical supplies and to maintain its equipment in operation. Failing this, the health situation will further worsen."

<http://www.i-p-o.org/un-sanctions-iraq.htm>

Economic sanctions are rapidly becoming one of the major tools of international governance of the post-Cold War era. The UN Security Council, empowered under Article 16 of the UN Charter to use economic measures to address "threats of aggression" and "breaches of peace," approved partial or comprehensive sanctions on only two occasions from 1945 to 1990. By contrast, since 1990 the Security Council has imposed sanctions on eleven nations, including the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Somalia, Liberia, Haiti, and several other nations. However, the U.S. has imposed sanctions, unilaterally or with other nations, far more frequently than any other nation in the world, or any multinational body in the world, including the United Nations. More than two-thirds of the sixty-plus sanctions cases between 1945 were initiated and maintained by the United States, and three-quarters of these cases involved unilateral U.S. action without significant participation by other countries.(1) Thus, while the question of ethical legitimacy has implications for the UN strategies of international governance, it has far greater implications for the U.S., which uses sanctions more frequently and in many more contexts, from trade regimes and human rights enforcement to its efforts to maintain regional and global hegemony.

Sanctions seem to lend themselves well to international governance. They seem more substantial than mere diplomatic protests, yet they are politically less problematic, and less costly, than military incursions. They are often discussed as though they were a mild sort of punishment, not an act of aggression of the kind that has actual human costs. Consequently, sanctions have for the most part avoided the scrutiny that military actions would face, in the domains of both politics and ethics.

The sanctions against Iraq, and the massive, long-term human suffering they have inflicted, have undermined this common view of sanctions. Since 1991, international agencies have documented Iraq's explosion in child mortality rates, water-borne diseases from untreated water supplies, malnutrition in large sectors of the population, and on and on. The most reliable estimate holds that 237,000 Iraqi children under five are dead as a result of sanctions, with other estimates going as high as one million.(2) The deaths from sanctions are far greater than the number of Iraqis directly killed in the Persian Gulf War -- an estimated 40,000 casualties, both military and civilian.(3) But the sanctions are shocking not only because of the extent of the human damage, but also because the suffering has been borne primarily by women, children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor; the state and the wealthy classes seem to be inconvenienced, but are otherwise exempt from extreme hardship.

The situation in Iraq compels us to reexamine the moral basis of economic sanctions. Because it is now clear that sanctions can do fully as much human damage as warfare, it seems to me critical that we begin applying a higher level of scrutiny than has been the case since the end of World War I. Furthermore, because sanctions are themselves a form of violence, I would argue that they cannot legitimately be seen merely as a peacekeeping device, or as a tool for enforcing international law. Rather, I will suggest, they require the same level of justification as other acts of warfare. Thus, in this essay, I will look at principles of Just War Doctrine, applicable in the case of Iraq, but I will also look at Just War Doctrine as it applies to sanctions generally, even where the human consequences are less extreme than those in Iraq.

<http://www.crosscurrents.org/gordon.htm>