War Could Spell Doom for Iraq's Children

The statistics sound like a death toll for a country that hasn’t even emerged from the wounds of the last war 12 years ago and is poised on the brink of another.

Of the approximately 12.5 million children in Iraq, every fourth one is chronically malnourished. Five million Iraqis have no access to clean drinking water, making diarrhea one of the most common ailments. Child mortality has drastically increased: At the end of the 1980s, 5.6 percent of Iraqi children died before age six. Today, that figure has jumped to 13 percent, with every eighth child not making it to his or her fifth birthday. One in four Iraqi children of elementary school age doesn't go to school. The country used to have a school enrollment rate of over 90 percent.

Those were the facts presented by Reinhard Schlagintweit, chairman of UNICEF Germany, at a news conference in Berlin on Monday. His message was clear: "Whatever happens in the coming weeks in Iraq, protection and help for the children must take priority."

Together with acclaimed British actress and UNICEF ambassador Vanessa Redgrave -- who made a film in 1991 about the ramifications of the Gulf War on children -- Schlagintweit stressed that the situation of children in Iraq was already so drastic that another war there would probably result in a humanitarian catastrophe that would be difficult to contain.

Redgrave appealed to governments around the world to put politics aside and give more priority to the well-being of children.

"We have to put children before politics, and most of the terrible problems in our world are the result of governments of all descriptions, successive governments, all nationalities, putting politics before children," Redgrave said.

UNICEF intensifies operations in Iraq

UNICEF has already redoubled its efforts in Iraq to secure the basic needs of the population for at least a month in the event that war breaks out.

Some 300 UNICEF workers in Iraq -- among them more than a dozen foreigners -- are working round the clock to deliver basic medicines and food with high protein content, such as 150 tons of milk and 1,110 tons of biscuits, to 63 children’s hospitals in Iraq as well as to refugee camps at the borders to Iran and Jordan. Schlagintweit said about 240,000 children are so badly undernourished they have to be fed a special diet.

UNICEF has vaccinated about 4 million children against polio in the past few weeks alone, and in the coming weeks half a million children will receive shots for measles.

In the larger Iraqi cities, emergency generators for water works and hospitals are being refitted with reserve fuel, and tents and school material are being stockpiled in the north of the country so that refugee families can "at least keep their children busy and distract them from the conflict," says Schlagintweit.

Spokesman warns of drastic consequences of war

The spokesman for UNICEF Iraq, Geoffrey Keele, who spent the last nine months in Baghdad, said at the news conference that diarrhea and respiratory illnesses were the most common causes of death among children.

He estimated that contaminated water -- and the lack of opportunities to treat it -- was the main reason for illnesses among the population.

Keele stressed that about 60 percent of Iraqis were completely dependent on food rations handed out by the government and warned that the consequences of a war disrupting distribution of the rations were unforeseeable.

Keele also said that the situation was already crumbling in most social areas, among them nutrition, water sanitation installations, education and child protection, and that a war would only make matters worse.

As an example, he spoke of the challenges that UNICEF faced in providing education for children. "The education sector is still falling rapidly. Seventy percent of all of the existing schools in the country need to be completely rebuilt. Some of them are too dangerous for children to go and study in. In other schools, there is no glass in the windows, there is no electricity, some don’t have desks. Children are sitting on the floor and learning," he said.

Bracing for a swell of refugees

Meanwhile countries bordering Iraq have already begun making preparations in anticipation of a huge wave of refugees pouring in if war breaks out.

U.N. experts estimate that 600,000 to 1.5 million Iraqi refugees will seek haven in neighboring countries, while up to 2 million people will become internal refugees within Iraq. Most refugees are likely to flee to Iran, which shares the longest border with Iraq.

Tehran has already begun constructing camps for refugees. Although Iranian officials expect some 200,000 Iraqis to seek entry, experience has shown that there could be more. During the 1991 Gulf War, 1.3 million Iraqis fled to Iran.