UN-POLITICS: Food Situation in Iraq “Terrible.”

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 2 1997 (IPS) - U.N. officials, concerned over the worsening situation of Iraq’s economy and social infrastructure, are calling for an increase in Baghdad’s allowance to sell oil for food.

Benon Sevan, executive director of the U.N. Office of the Iraq Programme, told reporters Tuesday that the present deal, that allows Iraq to sell one billion dollars of oil every 90 days to pay for food and other humanitarian goods, is insufficient. “The situation is terrible,” he declared.

The U.N. Security Council put the ‘oil-for-food’ plan into effect last year, in an effort to mitigate the crisis caused by Iraq’s economic collapse following the 1990 imposition of U.N. sanctions. The deal allows Baghdad to buy goods with the one billion dollars of oil revenues it raises every three months – but the programme has done little to alleviate the economic crisis over the past year, U.N. officials say.

Sevan noted that many goods arrive in Iraq slowly, following a process by which the Security Council and the Office of the Iraq Programme monitor the purchasing and distribution of goods. Some products have arrived so late, Sevan argued, that their expiration dates have passed. In other cases, he said, “archaic rules and regulations” delayed some chemical sprays needed for crops until after the harvest season ended.

Iraq has blamed many delays on the United States, which has used its seat on the Security Council committee overseeing the ‘oil-for-food’ plan to block or delay many oil sales or humanitarian requests. But U.N. officials argue that, even without the delays, the programme allows too little aid to relieve the suffering in Iraq.

“Even if all the supplies arrived on time, what is being provided … would be insufficient to address, even as a temporary measure, all the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote in a report released this week.

Some officials have suggested expanding the programme to double its present size, so that Iraq would be able to sell about eight billion dollars of oil each year. Annan did not set a specific dollar amount for the increase, but is expected to decide on an appropriate level for the programme by next January at the latest.

The 15-nation Security Council is expected to renew the oil-for- food deal at its present level on Thursday. But Council members – including the United States – have said in recent days that the level of aid provided by the programme needs to increase.

Last month, during the three-week standoff over U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offered the expansion of the deal as one potential ‘carrot’ for Iraq’s cooperation.

The Iraqi government itself only grudgingly accepts the current plan, announcing that it would allow an extension of the deal only after staging several protests last week against the continuation of sanctions. “Iraq has accepted the oil-for-food deal as a temporary measure, not as an alternative to the complete lifting of sanctions,” the country’s information ministry said in a statement Sunday.

The programme, Sevan said, currently provides minimal food aid to some 2.2 million Iraqis, both in areas controlled by Saddam Hussein’s government and in the autonomous Kurdish zones in the north. Many of the calories in the food provided consist of only digesting starches, while more nutritious products – such as meat and powdered milk – remain outside Iraqi food baskets.

Annan herefore has urged “the necessity of reviewing the nutritional value of the current food basket, both in relation to the general population and also to the specific, pressing needs of those most at risk of malnutrition.” He called for an enlarged food ration since the current level, “even if it is distributed completely and in a timely manner, cannot address the chronic malnutrition and energy deficiency in adults.”

According to a 1996 survey by the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the acute malnutrition rate for children below five rose by 11 percent last year, while 26 percent of Iraqi children were underweight. In surveys conducted this past April and October, UNICEF concluded that the malnutrition of infants had not improved since last year’s study.

Similarly, a study of adults and children in Baghdad and Karbala, conducted this summer by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health Organisation, confirmed high levels of malnutrition observed in both groups.

Sevan said that his office has conducted more than 176,000 visits to make sure that the aid bought by the deal is at least properly distributed to those in need. But even so, he argued, providing food aid in the context of a seven-year-old international embargo is as challenging as “trying to fly a small Cessna plane between two mountain walls … You’re bound to clip your wings.”