Iraq's Speech at the Security Council's Meeting of 17 April 2000
Mr. Hasan : Allow me at the outset to express to you, Mr. President, our sincere thanks for convening this meeting to consider the issue of sanctions, which has become a source of concern for the entire international community, especially in the past decade - the "decade of sanctions", as it has come to be known.
With the collapse of the socialist bloc at the end of the 1980s, the world became unipolar: the United States of America, with its use of illegitimate means to affect international decision-making, has been able to impose its views and priorities on the United Nations, including through its extremist use of sanctions. In the period from the creation of the United Nations to 1990, the Security Council resorted to sanctions on only two occasions: once against the racist regime of Rhodesia, and once against the regime in South Africa. Between 1990 and 1997, sanctions were imposed against 11 States. The majority of those sanctions were imposed in implementation of United States policy. The United States has used the United Nations as part of its diplomatic arsenal. Indeed, that fact was stated by Senator Jesse Helms before the Security Council on 20 January this year.
The United States inaugurated its first-ever act of hegemony over the United Nations on 6 August 1990 by imposing comprehensive sanctions against Iraq in resolution 661 (1990) - merely four days after the events of 2 August 1990 - without providing the slightest opportunity to resort to peaceful means to resolve the issue. Those comprehensive sanctions were unprecedented. They will perhaps remain unique in the history of the United Nations and the Security Council. Those sanctions prohibited an entire State from all forms of import or export. The exception provided for in resolution 661 (1990), for medical and food supplies, had no practical application, because Iraq is prohibited from exporting any products that could earn the hard currency necessary to cover the cost of food and medical imports.
Among the reasons why the United States of America was able to impose its sanctions policy in the Security Council was the absence of any checks or balances in the Charter of the United Nations limiting the excessive use of sanctions. Article 41 of the Charter includes a general provision relating to coercive sanctions, but no other Article in the Charter clearly provides for any control over the use of this blunt instrument. The comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iraq have led to a humanitarian tragedy: the deaths of more than 1.5 million Iraqi civilians. The sanctions have destroyed the infrastructure of the economy and the foundations of life in general in Iraq.
Paragraphs 17 to 27 of the second annex of Ambassador Amorim's report to the Security Council dated 30 March 1999 (S/1999/356) provide a detailed picture of the catastrophic effects that sanctions have had on all aspects of life in Iraq, including the serious decrease in Iraq's gross domestic product and a reduction in per capita income. These effects include the severe increase in mortality rates, particularly among mothers and children; severe malnutrition among a large proportion of children; grave deterioration in infrastructure, particularly water supplies, sanitation networks, electricity grids, hospitals and medical centres; shrinking of registration of children in schools to 53 per cent - a cultural and intellectual paucity as well as the destruction of the social fabric in general.
Ambassador Amorim in his report concludes that the humanitarian situation in Iraq will remain in its painful condition unless considerable revival takes place in the Iraqi economy that, in turn cannot take place through palliative humanitarian efforts alone.
Furthermore, many international reports have described the catastrophic effects of sanctions against Iraq in detail, including reports by specialized United Nations agencies such as United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), as well as by nongovernmental organizations and also by those working in the field, including Mr. Denis Halliday, Mr. Hans Sponeck, Mrs. Burkhardt and, indeed, many others.
In dealing with the lack of any checks in the Charter against the indiscriminate use of sanctions, former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali recommended a study of the issue. An open-ended working group presided over by the Ambassador of Brazil, Mr. Amorim, was established, and the General Assembly adopted its recommendations in resolution 51/242 on 15 September 1997.
It is truly regrettable that the Security Council failed to take up any of the working group's substantive recommendations aimed at reforming current or future sanctions regimes, and specifically the comprehensive sanctions imposed against Iraq. The group's recommendations remained a dead letter. Foremost among them were the following: a specific time-frame should be set for sanctions regimes; the Security Council should precisely set out the steps to be taken by the targeted country for sanctions against it to be lifted; and efforts should be made to enable targeted countries to obtain appropriate resources and procedures to finance humanitarian imports. The objective of sanctions is to modify the behaviour of the country under sanctions, not to punish or otherwise exact retribution. The working group also recommended that there be consideration of the grave negative effects of sanctions on the abilities and activities of targeted countries in the field of development; the Security Council should submit regular reports to the General Assembly on the status of specific sanctions regimes; measures should be adopted in response to the expectations raised by Article 50 of the Charter; and, finally, targeted countries should be enabled to exercise their right to express their viewpoint before the sanctions committees.
Thereafter, the President of the Security Council prepared a note on 29 January 1999, document S/1999/92, recommending limited improvements to the working methods of sanctions committees. However, those recommendations did not tackle the foremost problem, which is that the activities of these committees are based on the rule of unanimity. In practice, such a rule allows any member of a committee to exercise a veto, to prevent a decision agreed upon by the other fourteen members. This happens in contravention of the most fundamental rules of democracy, not to mention the principle of collective responsibility.
Such a practice has allowed the United States of America to place a hold on $1.8 billion worth of humanitarian contracts under the oil for food programme, for political reasons to boot. Furthermore, that practice prevented the Committee from reaching agreement on many ways to improve its working methods. Although limited, the proposed improvements in the recommendations found no reflection whatsoever in the sanctions Committee on Iraq.
As an example, many international bodies, many humanitarian organizations and specialized agencies in the United Nations have submitted studies on the catastrophic effects of sanctions imposed against Iraq. However, it seems that the Iraq sanctions Committee was the last to listen. That Committee further continued to work behind closed doors, and because of a United States veto it refused to invite the Permanent Representative of Iraq to clarify Iraq's position vis-a-vis the issues before it. Furthermore, the Committee refused to provide its agenda or summary records to Iraq.
It is regrettable that the current Chairman of the sanctions Committee on Iraq has preconceived positions vis-a-vis Iraq that reflect on the way he presides over the Committee. Sometimes he is more royalist than the American king himself. I do not believe that I am really telling any member of the Security Council anything new in this regard.
When the Security Council imposes coercive measures against States, it must keep in mind the interconnectedness of international obligations and responsibilities according to international treaties and conventions which as a whole are an integral source of international law as well as international humanitarian law. In the case of Iraq , the United States has forced the Security Council to impose comprehensive sanctions that are in contradiction to many international treaties and conventions, including merely as an example, the Convention on the Prohibition and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of 1948, which defines genocide as acts perpetrated with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical or religious group through the killing of individual members of the group, causing physical or psychological harm to members of that group or the imposition of living conditions on that group leading to its physical destruction in whole or in part. According to that definition, the comprehensive sanctions imposed against Iraq are a crime of genocide by any standard.
Secondly, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25, paragraph 1, provides that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family".
Thirdly, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, article 1, paragraph 2, provides that "In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence."
Fourth is the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Protocols. Article 54, paragraph 1, of the first Protocol provides that "The starvation of civilians shall not be used as a means of war."
Fifth is the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Today some circles are floating the idea of replacing the current sanctions regime against Iraq with a smarter one. This call is ill-intentioned. It has no basis in reality. Among other objectives, it is aimed at entrenching the sanctions and rendering them an objective in and of themselves. This is an attempt to rewrite the Security Council decisions and to turn Iraq into a permanent laboratory of sanctions regimes. Sanctions were imposed against Iraq through Council resolution 661 (1990) because of the events in Kuwait. Thereafter the issue of weapons of mass destruction was added in resolution 687 (1991).
Iraq has satisfied the requirements of both resolutions. Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait on 28 February 1991. The issue of weapons of mass destruction has been settled for years. The now defunct United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) and the United States of America have been unable to provide one iota of truth to the contrary. The latest testimony to that effect comes in the statements made by the former inspector, Mr. Scott Ritter, to the journalist John Pilger in a programme aired by the British ITV channel on 6 March 2000. A copy of the videotape has been distributed to Security Council members. Scott Ritter, certainly no friend of Iraq's, stated the following:
"In 1991 Iraq had significant capability in areas of chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons production capability and longrange ballistic missiles manufacturing capability. But in 1998 the chemical weapons infrastructure had been completely dismantled or destroyed by UNSCOM or by Iraq in compliance with UNSCOMS's mandate. The biological weapons programme had been declared in its totality late in the game but it was gone. All the major facilities were eliminated. The nuclear weapons programme was completely eliminated. The long-range ballistic missile programme was completely eliminated. All that was left was the research and development and manufacturing capability for missiles with a range of less than 150 kilometres, a permitted activity. Everything we set out to destroy in 1991. The physical infrastructure had been eliminated. So if I had to quantify Iraq's threat in terms of weapons of mass destruction, the real threat is zero, none."
Mr. Ritter added:
"We should reformulate that mandate to qualitative disarmament. Does Iraq have chemical weapons today? No. Does Iraq today have long-range ballistic missiles today? No. Nuclear'? No. Biological? No. Is Iraq qualitatively disarmed? Yes. "
That testimony by a senior UNSCOM inspector who undertook both inspection and espionage in Iraq, a person fully knowledgeable about the ethos of former Iraqi programmes, is sufficient to make clear to Security Council members and the international community that what ought to be looked into now is lifting the sanctions imposed on Iraq, not to replace or suspend them with unjust conditions. Sanctions kill 7,000 Iraqi children a month. Sanctions are destroying the fabric of an entire society. The sanctions and the organized destruction undertaken by the United States and the United Kingdom against Iraqi civilian establishments through continuing acts of aggression and no-fly-zones and the environmental and health catastrophe resulting from the use of depleted uranium against Iraq during the Gulf War are all elements of the gravest crime against mankind in the modern times. This crime must cease immediately.
Let me take this opportunity to make an appeal to all the countries of the world. Sanctions against Iraq were imposed by members, in accordance with paragraph I of Article 24 of the Charter, through which you authorized the Security Council to act on your behalf. You have a legal and moral duty to take this authority away from the Security Council because it has used its authority to perpetrate a crime of genocide. Whoever of you does so will absolve himself of the responsibility of having a hand in the genocide of an entire people. You will thus help in maintaining the credibility of the United Nations in accordance with the Charter. This may also help the United States to become fully aware of its crimes, take the correct road in international relations and respect the United Nations Charter.
Nations and States throughout the world have begun to heed our appeal, as reflected in a recent letter by Russian parliamentarians addressed to the President of the Security Council. Moreover, members of the European Parliament have called for the immediate lifting of the sanctions imposed against Iraq. I do not believe that anyone in the world can today justify their immoral silence in the face of this crime by claiming that they see no evil or hear no evil.
That is our message to the Security Council, and we hope and trust that the Council will respond to it.