UNITED NATIONS: U.N. Sanctions Victims Demand Relief

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 1996 (IPS) - Countries that have borne the brunt of U.N. punishment againsv other rogue nations say it is high time they receive compensation.

Turkey, India, Jordan, Nigeria, Egypt, Cameroon, and Tanzania, are demanding relief from the United Nations for the disruption caused to their economies when the United Nations levelled economic embargoes against Iraq, Rwanda, Burundi, Libya, and Sudan.

“We suffered more than 27 billion dollars in losses as a result of the Gulf crisis,” Turkish Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller said here this week.

Two arguments are currently used against U.N. sanctions. Some argue that although sanctions are meant to punish governments and rulers, they invariably cause the worst hardships to people. Sanctions also cause severe economic losses to countries who are unintended victims, others say.

When the United Nations imposed a ban against sales of Iraqi oil following Baghdad’s Aug. 1990 invasion of Kuwait, one of the countries economically devastated was neighbouring Turkey.

The oil flow from Iraq to Turkey came to a halt, and the shutdown of Iraqi oil pipelines running through Turkish territory deprived the Turks of billions of dollars in revenue.

“We are still faced with energy cut-offs and electricity cut- offs even in our capital,” Ciller said, “And energy has become a major policy issue in the country.”

More than 21 developing countries have complained that they collectively lost about 30 billion dollars on import-export contracts and on migrant earnings because of the measures against Iraq.

The unintended victims have included Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Yemen, India, the Philippines, Turkey, Uruguay, and Syria. The sanctions against Iraq brought trade and commerce to a virtual standstill in the Gulf region.

Ambassador Prakash Shah of India Monday called for the establishment of a permanent U.N. financial mechanism to address problems faced by unintended victims of sanctions. The fund, he said, should be financed by assessed contributions from member- states and “should be within the United Nations, so that it could be pressed into service automatically if necessary.”

This proposal for “assessed” rather than voluntary contributions would make all 185 member-states responsible for providing redress to victims. Shah said that voluntary donations could be viewed as a purely supplementary source of funding.

“The cost of sanctions should be shared by all member- states,” agreed Pascaline Boum of Cameroon.

Egypt says that the United Nations should not overlook the human dimension of sanctions.

It is for humanitarian reasons that the world body has agreed to allow Iraq to sell about a billion dollars’ worth of oil every three months, so that the export earnings could be used to provide food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance to Iraqis suffering the consequences of U.N. sanctions.

“The oil-for-food programme created to give humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people who had been suffering for six years was a good example of assistance to those affected by sanctions,” said Egyptian diplomat Hussein Mubarak.

During the 1990-91 Gulf crisis, hundreds of thousands of expatriate labourers fled the Middle East depriving their home countries of billions of dollars in remittances.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has himself complained about the negative impact of unmonitored sanctions. In recent years, he says, the international community has increasingly used sanctions to achieve a wide range of objectives in accordance with the provisions of the U.N. charter.

He notes that several internatonal humanitarian organisations have approached Security Council sanctions committees to draw attention to the adverse humanitarian implications and to obtain authorisation for shipments of relief goods.

According to former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Eliasson, “sanctions may be the best weapon the Security Council has, but they are a blunt weapon that punishes people who are not to blame.”

Some countries oppose the proposal to set up a U.N. Trust Fund to help third-party states.

Australia says it has serious reservations regarding such a fund, particularly in view of the financial crisis facing the world body.

“It is better to focus on improving existing practices and procedures rather than establishing new ones,” says Australian diplomat Mark Gray.

Since 1977, the United Nations has imposed embargoes against South Africa, what was then Southern Rhodesia, Haiti, Rwanda, Angola, Liberia, Libya, Somalia, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia.