Iraq
Photo courtesy of the U.N. (#187401)
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CESR has worked in Iraq since 1991, conducting comprehensive field surveys to assess the impact of war and sanctions on socio-economic conditions there, and undertaking extensive advocacy and public education efforts to reverse the policies which have contributed to the suffering there. CESR’s research studies have documented an entire people reeling under economic collapse, caught in a cycle of hunger and disease that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraq's most vulnerable members.
In April 1991, one month after the cease-fire that ended the first Gulf War, the 12-member Harvard Study Team (precursor to CESR) organized the first non-governmental post-war mission to assess the impact of war and sanctions in Iraq. Their report of a public health catastrophe received front-page international coverage and was submitted to the UN Security Council.
In September 1991, CESR directors organized a 87-person international mission (the International Study Team) to conduct the most comprehensive studies in Iraq to date, including an epidemiological survey of infant and child mortality. This was the first mission to document a dramatic increase in mortality rates and excess child deaths due to war and sanctions. The findings were published as Health and Welfare in Iraq after the Gulf Crisis: An In-Depth Assessment [pdf, 1.68 mb]. The team also made a documentary film shown on public television in the US and Europe.
In 1993, 1995 and 1997, Sarah Zaidi, CESR’s Research Director, participated in FAO missions to Iraq that highlighted the depth of the humanitarian crisis. Her letter to The Lancet was the first to publicly discuss a figure of 500,000 excess child deaths, later confirmed in a UNCIEF epidemiological survey.
In 1996, to assess the impact of sanctions from a human rights perspective, CESR conducted independent surveys on economic conditions, public health, sanitation, and infrastructure in Iraq. The resulting report, UNsanctioned Suffering, offered evidence of the devastating toll that UN-imposed sanctions were taking on Iraqi society and was the first major report to charge the US and the UN Security Council with violating human rights, including the right to life, by imposing collective punishment on the Iraqi population in an effort to change the behavior of its leadership.
The report was presented to the Security Council and as part of a sustained lobbying campaign CESR also wrote Op-Eds in the Washington Post and International Herald Tribune, published articles critiquing US policy, and presented its human rights findings in meetings, seminars, and academic forums to audiences in the US and abroad. The news show 60 Minutes produced an award-winning segment on this mission, featuring CESR directors debating the US Ambassador to the UN, Madeline Albright.
Photo by Sarah Zaidi
In 1997, CESR organized a fourth mission to Iraq to research a comprehensive report on the economic impact of sanctions. CESR sent a team of economists from the London School of Economics to Iraq to study the effect of sanctions on the Iraqi economy and the livelihood and well-being of its population. The enormous human and economic costs of sanctions are examined in Sanctions Against Iraq: Costs of Failure. The report also resulted in hearings at the UK House of Commons.
In 1997 CESR contributed to the adoption of General Comment No. 8 by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which established a human rights framework for sanctions. We also successfully petitioned the Committee on the Rights of the Child to recognize the link between sanctions and violations of child rights.
In late 2002, CESR launched an Emergency Campaign on Iraq to advocate for peaceful alternatives - based on well-established principles of international law - to the Bush Administration's lawless drive to invade Iraq. As part of this campaign, CESR produced a set of educational resources and fact sheets, prepared legal and humanitarian reports, and conducted fact-finding in Iraq.
In January 2003, a CESR organized a research mission to Iraq to assess the likely humanitarian consequences of war through a combination of field surveys and interviews. The team - which included six experts in food security and nutrition, public health infrastructure, primary and public health care, and emergency and curative medicine - was given unusually free access to investigate a wide range of civilian sites throughout Iraq and interview government and U.N. officials. In addition, the team obtained confidential U.N. documents on humanitarian conditions and emergency planning for war in Iraq.
Based upon its research the team released a report, The Human Cost of War in Iraq [pdf, 2.75 mb], which assessed the full costs of a potential war, especially to vulnerable civilians, with a focus on likely damage to essential public services if the U.S. targeted the economic and civilian infrastructure as they did in the first Gulf War. The report also established a baseline assessment of pre-war socio-economic conditions and sought to determine the extent to which Iraq's health infrastructure would be able to cope with the consequences of war.
In March 2003, as the Bush Administration sought unsuccessfully to bully the UN Security Council into providing a diplomatic fig leaf for its planned invasion of Iraq, CESR released a report, Tearing up the Rules: The Illegality of Invading Iraq [pdf, 315 kb], which presented a comprehensive analysis of why such a war against Iraq would be unequivocally illegal.
Once the Bush Administration went forward with its illegal invasion of Iraq, CESR examined US and UK responsibility for the unfolding humanitarian crisis there in its report, Water under Siege in Iraq.
In addition to its full-length reports, CESR also prepared a series of one-page fact sheets examining key topics related to the crisis in Iraq. These quick references were created for distribution to the public and to policy makers and covered the following topics:
- Overview of the Iraq Crisis [pdf, 278 kb]
- Costs and Consequences of War in Iraq [pdf, 178 kb]
- Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Iraqi Threat [pdf, 170 kb]
CESR’s most recent report on Iraq, Beyond Torture: U.S. Violations of Occupation Law in Iraq (June 2004), presents ten categories of U.S. violations of the laws of occupation. The report finds that one year after the war against Iraq, the U.S. is committing war crimes and other serious violations of international law in Iraq as a matter of ongoing policy.
