Minute on Sanctions Against Iraq
Adopted
by Lehigh Valley Friends (Quaker) Meeting, April 10, 1999
The Lehigh Valley Friends
(Quaker) Meeting solemnly takes note of the following, regarding
United Nations sanctions against Iraq:
(1) According
to a UNICEF report of April 30, 1998, "Economic sanctions
on Iraq over the past seven years have had a devastating effect
on the majority of the Iraqi people, particularly children."
According to UNICEF figures, a child dies every 12 minutes,
250 people die a day, and 90,000 people die each year because
of the sanctions. Furthermore, according to UNICEF, these deaths
could be prevented with an adequate amount of food, clean water,
and sufficient medicines.
( Situation Analysis of Children and Women in Iraq, 1998)
(2) The
sanctions have compounded the impact of allied bombing of Iraq
during and since the Gulf War of 1991. A World Health Organization/United
Nations mission to Iraq in March 1991 reported, "Nothing
that we had seen or read had quite prepared us for the particular
form of devastation which has now befallen the country. The
recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the
economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991,
a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now most means
of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous.
Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial
age, but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency
on an intensive use of energy and technology.... It is unmistakable
that the Iraqi people may soon face a further imminent catastrophe,
which could include epidemic and famine, if massive life-supporting
needs are not rapidly met.... Time is short." (The Impact
of War on Iraq, March 1991)
(3) The
co-ordinator of the UN oil-for-food program, Denis Halliday,
resigned in September 1998, describing the UN sanctions as "a
totally bankrupt concept ... [that] probably strengthens the
leadership and further weakens the people of the country."
While Halliday noted that disarmament (of the Saddam Hussein
regime) was a legitimate aim, he felt that the weapons searches
in Iraq were too "open-ended" and politicized. (BBC
On Line, 9/30/1998)
(4) In
November 1998, the American Friends Service Committee invited
a team of six pediatricians and child welfare specialists to
visit Iraq to assess the impact of eight years of economic sanctions.
On their return, they observed, "We returned from Iraq
with a sense of urgency. Iraq has lost --and continues to lose--
a generation whose numbers have not only been decreased and
weakened by disease, but have been isolated from the outside
world, and left to feed on feelings of bitterness and injustice."
(Child and Maternal Health and Nutrition in Iraq under the
Sanctions)
(5) A
"Call to Action on Sanctions and the U.S. War Against the
People of Iraq" --signed by Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman,
Edward Said, and Howard Zinn, among others-- observes, "The
time has come for a call to action to people of conscience.
We are past the point where silence is passive consent --when
a crime reaches these proportions, silence is complicity."
The Call to Action notes that a campaign to lift the sanctions
"is not equivalent to support for the regime of Saddam
Hussein. To oppose the sanctions is to support the Iraqi people.
The people are suffering because of the actions of both the
Iraqi and U.S. governments." (A Call to Action in Sanctions
and the U.S. War against the People of Iraq)
Accordingly,
the Lehigh Valley Friends (Quaker) Meeting supports the AFSC
call for the UN Security Council to "lift all sanctions
relating to health and nutrition sectors" as an immediate
Afirst step toward alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Iraq."
Further, we call upon the United Nations to re-evaluate the
economic sanctions against Iraq in light of their devastating
impact on innocent human beings and to consider arms control
within a regional framework. We urge a cessation of the use
of military force to resolve political differences with Iraq.
Finally, the Friends
Meeting calls upon people in the larger Lehigh Valley community
to reflect on the human consequences of actions which have been
largely initiated by our government and largely ignored by our
mass media. We urge all people to make their concerns known
to our public officials.
* *
* *
This action is to be
communicated to the Bucks Quarterly Meeting for their consideration
and shared with a wider audience.
OTHER
QUAKER STATEMENTS & LETTERS
Reviewed:
09/06/2005
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