DUBAI,
Feb 17 (Reuters) -
The United Nations' top humanitarian official in Baghdad says infant mortality in Iraq has
more than doubled under the U.N. embargo imposed in 1990.Hans von Sponeck, who announced
his resignation at the weekend saying U.N. humanitarian programmes in Iraq were
ineffective, added that one Iraqi child in five now suffered from malnutrition.
"We have
increasing evidence on many fronts. When you look at the mortality situation you could see
there is a rising trend," von Sponeck told Qatar's al-Jazeera satellite television.
"In 1991,
56 children under the age of five per 1,000 were dying. Now 10 years later, the figure has
gone up according to UNICEF to 131 per 1,000," he said in an interview from Baghdad
broadcast on Thursday.
"Malnutrition,
I keep saying every night one out of five Iraqi children under five goes to be
malnourished," he said.
"We have
evidence that mental disorders of children under 14 are increasing. So there is a sense of
hopelessness and can we afford, can anyone afford, to associate himself or herself with
such a reality? I cannot."
Von Sponeck, a
German career U.N. official in charge of the U.N. oil-for-food programme which allows Iraq
to trade oil for basic supplies, resigned with effect from March 31 saying the programme
failed to meet the humanitarian needs of Iraq's 22 million people.
Jutta
Burghardt, head of the World Food Programme in Iraq who is also German, also offered her
resignation at the weekend, saying a U.N. resolution offering to ease the 10-year-old
sanctions on Iraq was unworkable.
Von Sponeck
told al-Jazeera the state of education in Iraq was "totally inadequate".
"There is
not enough anywhere, whether it is books or pencils or classroom furniture....That is the
generation that is now in Iraq being prepared for responsible citizenship of
tomorrow," he said.
"Today,
with an unemployment rate that is estimated at between 60 and 75 percent, people depend on
what is given to them and that is humiliating and it does not make for a future of
self-reliance based on your efforts to earn in a dignified way a living," he added.
"Every
year that passes, every month in fact that passes, sees the intensity of the weight of the
sanctions on the lives of people here increase," he said.
U.N. sanctions
were imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The United Nations says Iraq must
allow the scrapping of its weapons of mass destruction before they can be lifted.
The United
Nations estimates that more than a million Iraqis have died, directly or indirectly
because of the sanctions.
Von Sponeck's
predecessor, Denis Halliday of Ireland, left his post in
mid-1998 after voicing similar views.