CESR started working in Iraq in 1991,conducting comprehensive field surveys to assess the impact of war andsanctions on socio-economic conditions there, and undertaking extensiveadvocacy and public education efforts to reverse the policies that contributed to people's suffering. CESR???sresearch studies documented Iraqis reeling undereconomic collapse, caught in a cycle of hunger and disease that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraq's most vulnerablemembers. 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 theimpact of war and sanctions in Iraq. Their report of a public healthcatastrophe received front-page international coverage and wassubmitted 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 anepidemiological survey of infant and child mortality. This was thefirst mission to document a dramatic increase in mortality rates andexcess child deaths due to war and sanctions. The findings werepublished as Health and Welfare in Iraq after the Gulf Crisis: An In-Depth Assessment. The team also made a documentary film shown on public television in the US and Europe.
In 1993, 1995 and 1997, Sarah Zaidi, then CESR???s Research Director, participated in the FAO mission 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 UNICEF epidemiological survey.
In 1996, to assess the impact of sanctions from a human rights perspective, CESR conductedindependent surveys on economic conditions, public health, sanitation,and infrastructure in Iraq. The resulting report, UN sanctioned Suffering,offered evidence of the devastating toll that UN-imposed sanctions weretaking on Iraqi society and was the first major report to charge the USand the UN Security Councilwith violating human rights, including the right to life, by imposingcollective punishment on the Iraqi population in an effort to changethe behavior of its leadership.
The report was presented to the Security Council and as part of a sustained lobbying campaign, CESR alsowrote Op-Eds in the Washington Post and International Herald Tribune,published articles critiquing US policy, and presented its human rightsfindings in meetings, seminars, and academic forums to audiences in theUS and abroad. The news show 60 Minutes produced an award-winningsegment on this mission, featuring CESR directors debating the then 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 senta team of economists from the London School of Economics to Iraq tostudy the effect of sanctions on the Iraqi economy and the livelihoodand well-being of its population. The enormous human and economic costsof 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. CESR 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 anEmergency Campaign on Iraq to advocate for peaceful alternatives -based on the principles of international law - to the BushAdministration's drive to invade Iraq. As part of thiscampaign, CESR produced a set of educationalresources and fact sheets, prepared legal and humanitarian reports, andconducted a fact-finding mission in Iraq.
In January 2003, CESR organized aresearch mission to Iraq to assess the likely humanitarian consequencesof war through a combination of field surveys and interviews. The team- including six experts in food security and nutrition, publichealth infrastructure, primary and public health care, and emergencyand curative medicine - was given unusually free access to investigatea wide range of civilian sites throughout Iraq and interview governmentand 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, assessing the full costs of a potential war, especially tovulnerable civilians, with a focus on likely damage to essential publicservices if the U.S. targeted the economicand civilian infrastructure as they did in the first Gulf War. Thereport also established a baseline assessment of pre-war socio-economicconditions and sought to determine the extent to which Iraq's healthinfrastructure would be able to cope with the consequences of war.
In March 2003, as the Bush Administration unsuccessfully attempted to convince the UN Security Council to provide a diplomatic cover for its planned invasion of Iraq, CESR released a report, Tearing up the Rules: The Illegality of Invading Iraq, which presented a comprehensive analysis of the illegality of such a war against Iraq.
After the Bush Administration went forward anyway with its 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 alsoprepared a series of one-page fact sheets examining key topics relatedto the crisis in Iraq. These quick references were created fordistribution to the public and to policy makers and covered thefollowing topics:
- Overview of the Iraq Crisis
- Costs and Consequences of War in Iraq
- Weapons of Mass Destruction: Assessing the Iraqi Threat
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. was committing war crimes and other serious violations of international law in Iraq as a matter of ongoing policy.