Though the conditions of the Iraqi populace certainly are a concern, doubly so for the children, the U.S. has reacted to United Nations’ claims of increasing child malnutrition by calling them questionable and political.
The U.S. human rights delegation Thursday rejected a U.N. monitor’s claim that child malnutrition had risen in Iraq and said, if anything, health conditions have improved since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Right Commission’s expert on the right to food, cited U.S. and European studies Wednesday in telling the commission that acute malnutrition rates among Iraqi children under 5 rose late last year to 7.7 percent from 4 percent after Saddam’s ouster in April 2003. Ziegler blamed the war for the situation.
“First, he has not been to Iraq, and second, he is wrong,” said Kevin E. Moley, U.S. ambassador to U.N. organizations in Geneva and a member of the American delegation to the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission.
“He’s taking some information that is in itself difficult to validate and juxtaposing his own views — which are widely known,” Moley said, referring to Ziegler’s opposition to the U.S. military intervention in the country.
Moley rejected the rate cited by Ziegler and said malnutrition in Iraq was notoriously difficult to gauge. He noted that some estimates had put it at 11 percent in 1996 and 7.8 percent in 2000, while Saddam was still in power.
“The surveys that have been taken … have indicated that the recent rise in malnutrition rates began between 2002 and 2003 under the regime of Saddam Hussein,” Moley said.
“If anything, vaccination, food aid … has improved dramatically since the fall of Saddam Hussein,” he added.
Also taking the UN claims to task is Captain Ed at Captain’s Quarters, who uses the UN’s own figures against them.
The report obviously aims itself at Washington, as the BBC reports. What the BBC fails to mention is that the report is dishonest, mathematically illiterate, historically inaccurate, and a terrific demonstration why the UN cannot be trusted with money or policy. Its timing appears to have been strategized to take the heat off of Kofi Annan and the massive and grotesque scandals wracking the United Nations.
Okay, a show of hands if you’re not sick of the UN. Anyone? Anyone?
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One response to “U.S. Denies U.N. Claim Iraqis Malnourished”
I’m so sick of the UN I could scream. Seems everything we hear about this miserable, impotent useless organization is BAD these days. And I’m really sick of the digs against the USA.