UMASS Professor Cites U.N. For Plight of Iraqi Children

A UMASS-Amherst professor and a Harvard researcher blamed United Nations (U.N.) sanctions for the starvation and poor nutrition of Iraqi children before an audience of roughly 50 students in Emerson Hall last night.

The forum, titled "The Gulf War Is Not Over For the Children of Iraq," featured Peter Pellett, head of the Department of Nutrition at the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Mary Smith Fawzi, a research associate for the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Pellett, who visited Iraq last year as part of a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) mission, outlined the deleterious effects of sanctions upon the nation's youth.

"It's so bizarre," he said. "The U.N. kills with one hand and feeds with the other. It's absolutely crazy."

Pellett listed those hardest hit by the sanctions, namely the rural poor, and noted that the sanctions have had little, if any, injurious effect upon the military leadership and power elite.

Pellett said while the sanctions are intended to "change a country's behavior by inflicting or threatening to inflict pain," they have only succeeded in reducing food production and leading to poor hygiene among children.

Summarizing the recommendations of the FAO report, Pellet called upon the U.N. to "enable Iraq--a potentially rich country--to use its own resources."

At the same time, however, Pellett said he recognizes that if the U.N. ended the sanctions on Iraq, it would be a "loss of face" for the organization.

"Sanctions are designed to hurt people, yet sanctions must be continued politically," he said.

Following Pellett's presentation, Fawzi elaborated on the mission's findings. She noted widespread cases of marasmus (severe malnutrition) and kwashiorkor (edema and swelling of the body) throughout the country.

According to the FAO report, conservative estimates place the death toll among children under five at 567,000, with a three-fold increase in infant mortality, and a four-fold increase in cases of marasmus since the end of the war, Fawzi said.

"There are severe psychological effects," she said. "People were desperate...it's deeply saddening."

The forum, attended mostly by Arab students, was co-sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Arab Society and the American Friends Service Committee.

"People are really ambivalent [about the situation]," said Arab Society President Ramy M. Tadros '97. "It isn't in the news, and it is really bordering on genocide. It truly is very sad."