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- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior
U.N. official said Friday about half a million children under the age of
5 have died in Iraq since the imposition of U.N. sanctions 10 years ago.
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- Anupama Rao Singh, country director for the U.N. Children's
Fund (UNICEF), made the estimate in an interview with Reuters.
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- ``In absolute terms we estimate that perhaps about half
a million children under 5 years of age have died, who ordinarily would
not have died had the decline in mortality that was prevalent over the
70s and the 80s continued through the 90s,'' she said.
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- A UNICEF survey published in August showed the mortality
rate among Iraqi children under 5 had more than doubled in the government-controlled
south and center of Iraq during the sanctions.
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- Baghdad said the UNICEF survey proved that the sanctions
were killing thousands of children every month and called for an immediate
end to the embargo.
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- Rao Sigh blamed malnutrition for the high mortality rate
among children.
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- ``Nutrition was not a public health problem in Iraq in
the 80s. It emerged as a major problem in the 90s and it increased steadily
till about 1996,'' Singh said.
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- She said since the start of the U.N. oil-for-food program,
malnutrition rates among children had stabilized, but death rates remained
extremely high.
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- ``One in four children below 5 suffers from some form
of malnutrition or other and most of them are chronically malnourished,''
Rao Singh said.
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- Sanctions were imposed on Iraq as punishment for its
1990 invasion of Kuwait, although the United Nations has allowed Iraq to
sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies.
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- Rao Singh said the sanctions also have affected the quality
of education, with many children forced to leave schools to hustle a living
on the streets.
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- ``There has been a drop in enrollment, an increase in
drop- outs ... children working, children in the street -- all of which,
we believe, is going to affect the quality of human resources that Iraq
will have in the future,'' she said.
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- According to Rao Singh, the sanctions have caused massive
impoverishment except for a small proportion of the elite. ``The majority
of middle class people in Iraq, for instance, now find themselves having
to do all sorts of mean and insecure jobs to survive,'' she said.
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