Sanctions On Iraq Essay, Research Paper

Sanctions on Iraq

The sanctions that have been placed on Iraq by the United States 10 years ago are now being the cause of the death of thousands of children because of inadequate medicine, food and water. The united states have been asked by the united nations and many other countries to remove these sanctions over the Iraqi people so they can go back to living their normal healthy lives and the states has repeatedly refused this move.

The whole reason for these sanctions is when Saddam Hussein borrowed money from Kuwait in order to be able to stay powerful on top of his war with Iran. He backed up his military with this money and it helped a great deal in the defeat over Iran. The years went by and Kuwait started asking for the money to be paid back. Iraq refused to pay the money and said that they did not have enough funds to pay of the dept at the moment. Everyone was aware of Iraq s chemical and biological researches that were costing Iraq a lot more than it would if they would intend to pay Kuwait. When things got out of hand and Kuwait demanded that the money be paid back, Saddam Hussein flexed his muscles and military and decided to show Kuwait that if he did not plan to pay then nothing can make him pay, he was willing to go in to war with Kuwait, this is when international powers got in to play with the game.

The United States, England and Russia took very high offensive against Iraq and decided that they would escalate things in to a near world war. They bombed Iraq s power plants, bridges, water filters and many other necessities that people cannot live without. As a result people were living with no power in their houses and still do till today, they have no refrigerators for their food, no heating systems for the winter colds and not enough funds to buy medicine if a member of the family gets sick.

After the United States and other international powers put Iraq s offensive to a stand still they began creating sanctions on the country so as the Iraqi government would be unable to continue their researches on any kinds of biological or chemical weapons. In doing so they now control all of Iraq s funds and the Iraqi people are suffering devastatingly from these sanctions. Over 120,000 children have died in the past ten years that the sanctions have been implemented on Iraq; all of the deaths could have been prevented if only proper hospitals and funds were available. This made the Iraqi people ask for UN analysts to come to Baghdad and see the human rights violations that are being made against this country. Two analysts from the UN went to Iraq to see if there was any truth to the accusations made, the first analyst resigned after 16 months and the other one after 18 months. The reason for this is because the UN analysts found many human rights violations in Iraq and one even called it Genocide, after many pleads by the UN analysts were ignored and rejected by the officials in power they resigned.

This is a clear case of human rights violations and the international powers refuse to see it and take blame for it. Even if Iraq had made the first mistake by flexing it muscles against its neighbor, we should not agree for a whole new generation to grow up in devastating hate and misery against a superior country. They have been punished for 10 years now and nothing is being made to help improve the quality of life for the Iraqi people, the international powers are not only punishing a present mistake, they are jeopardizing a whole new generation in the future full of hatred and vengeance against them. We cant just stand by and except these kinds of sanctions placed on a poor country that is unable to heal the sick, feed the hungry or supply clean water to the thirsty. This is a shame to see that the world power (US) that always boasts about human rights and freedom of soul and body can do such atrocities against a helpless and poor country.