By:  Group # 41       Hu, SuYan (1193)         Liu, XiuPing (1198)         Zhang, MeiYan (1197)

Pictures:   [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]  ( LINK )

        Our group is going to do a project on economic sanctions in Iraq.  Iraq is one of the few countries under economic sanctions.  This will have a great affect on Iraq. A country like Iraq, living under economic sanctions has a major impact on its society.  The economic sanctions bring a lot of problems to the people who are living in Iraq.  People are lacking proper nutrition, food, and medicine.  Many children die from these problems.  Also, people had suffered living under the economic sanctions.  Basically, for this  project, we are going to answer some questions regarding  the topic of Economic Sanctions.  Here are the questions:  

1). What are economic sanctions??                                         (Answer)

2). What is the cause and result of economic sanctions?       (Answer)    

3). How people response to the economic sanctions?            (Answer)

4). Should economic sanctions stop?                                       (Answer)

5). What is "oil-for-food"? Does it help?                                 (Answer)

6). What's the future for Iraq?                                                  (Answer)

Conclusion

Reflection :     Hu, SuYan  |  Zheng, MeiYan  |  Liu, XiuPing

        Economic sanctions are the restrictions on international trade and finance impose by one country on another for political reasons. [1]  Economic sanctions are usually the most important of all sanctions imposed on a country.  They are basically measures applied in response to wrongdoing by a state, such as an act of invasion into another state or pursuit of a racial policy that is considered to be wrong from the perspective of international law or moral standards.  [2]  

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        Economic sanctions, which are impose against Iraq, may not work so well  because they  have been separated into two phases.   The first phase was begun on Aug 2, 1990, with imposition of the US and will end on Jan. 15.  The second phase was following the conclusion of Desert Storm, and will end at the conclusion of the war.  The result of the first phase, which is the sanctions, provided Saddam Hussein enough time and opportunities to change world opinion.  It also provides a text book lesson in how to use economic sanctions as a prelude to war. The result of the second phase, which is on March 26, in a major foreign policy speech delivered at Georgetown University, sought to establish such a link without explicitly calling for Saddam's eviction by making it clear that the US would maintain the sanctions against Iraq as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power.  [8]

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        Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the United Nations Security Council instituted broad and comprehensive economic and military sanctions against the government of Iraq.  These sanctions, supported by the vast majority of the international community, were intended to encourage Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait. Before the war, sanctions were supported by many, including AFSC (American Friends Service Committee), as a nonviolent alternative to war. After the war, military and economic sanctions designed to prevent Iraq from developing, and ultimately using nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons against neighboring states and internal dissidents were instituted. In 1996 the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program was established that allowed Iraq to sell a portion of its oil to purchase food and humanitarian materials. All oil sales and purchase orders would be monitored through the United Nations. While it attempts to address the basic nutritional and health crisis, the program is inadequate. More than nine years later, the most severe sanctions ever to be imposed on a country remain in place. Consistent pressure by western nations, led by the United States, has transformed the sanctions against Iraq into an oppressive economic embargo on the entire population. The sanctions have become a weapon of mass destruction. According to United Nations estimates, more than one million people in Iraq have died since 1990 as a direct result of the embargo. Inadequate access to food, medicine, clean water, and a de facto prohibition on reconstruction of the civilian infrastructure, brought on by the embargo, causes more than 5,000 Iraqi children to die each month. The people of Iraq have been forced to struggle merely to survive, resulting in devastating social and economic paralysis. To help address one aspect of this crisis, AFSC is launching a project to rehabilitate schools in southern Iraq.  [5]

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            As economic sanctions had existed, people and the children in Iraq had suffered from them.  So, should economic sanctions really stop?  As a result of the sanctions, there are over 500,000 children who have died because of them.  At the beginning, people in Iraq thought sanctions  would help them, and they supported them a lot, but as time was running out more and more problems appeared.  One problem was that the whole society in Iraq was battered, malnourished, unemployed, humiliated, without hope, and nearly forgotten by America.  At the same time, there was lot of diseases growing, like malaria, typhoid, and cholera.  A doctor named Dr. Basim Al Abdili said he could help all those patients heal, but the problem was that he didn't have the proper medicine and medical equipment.  Doctors like Dr. Basim Al Abdili only could watch those little children die and couldn't do anything to them.  Also, according to all these problems, children in Iraq not only will die early, but will have their futures which are lacking too.  So, to solve all these horrible problems, "to stop sanctions", we really need to think.  [6]           

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        The "oil for food" program, which commenced in December 1996, allows Iraq to export oil and use part of the money raised, which is kept in a UN bank account in New York, to buy basic goods from other countries. Iraq is using its own money to buy these goods: the oil for food program is not "humanitarian aid" as some US and UK politicians have claimed on occasion. The nature of the program was established in an agreement between the UN Secretariat and the Government of Iraq from May 1996. Oil for food was never meant to act as an adequate substitute for the independent functioning of the Iraqi economy. Security Council Resolution 986 itself refers to the program as a "temporary measure". Oil-For-Food is no permanent help to Iraq. This was the wish of the United States, which has insisted that there should be no time limit on the work of U.N. inspectors charged with stripping Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. But the U.N. knows how badly the Iraqi people are hurting. Since the sanctions regime began in 1991, the infant mortality rate in Iraq has risen seven-fold from 24 to 168 deaths per 1,000 births and the mortality rate for those above 50 has tripled. So Annan preceded his trip to Baghdad by pushing through a motion to enlarge the U.N.'s so-called 'oil-for-food' scheme, which permits Iraq to export oil and buy goods to ease the effects of the 90-month economic siege. [4]

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        There is a more fundamental issue at stake in this region. The conflict between the Kurds and the Government of Iraq that resulted in the mass refugee exodus of 1991 remains unresolved. A decade of sanctions and international involvement has failed to bring any real peace and security to this region. For the moment the Kurds control their own affairs, but with no formal international status. This unresolved issue creates political uncertainty which jeopardizes the future security of the region, and raises fears among the population that, when sanctions are lifted, they will be left without protection or support. The oil for food program, though beneficial in some ways, is a part of this same short-term approach. One evident consequence has been a high level of out-migration, further jeopardizing the future social and economic prospects of this region. The application of this type of 'blanket' economic sanctions inevitably leads to some measure of civilian hardship, since they affect the whole spectrum of civilian life - even when the infrastructure is not damaged or disrupted by war, as it was in Iraq. The hardship created by the economic embargo has been misdirected to the civilian population rather than to the regime.  As a result, the economic and social rights of the population - their right to life, health, a basic livelihood and education - have been seriously infringed upon by the outcomes of the embargo. The Iraqi leadership, like that of Slobodan Milosevic, remains in power despite economic sanctions.  As the recent report from the International Development Select Committee points out: 'A sanctions regime which relies on the good will of Saddam Hussein is fundamentally flawed'. At the same time, after almost a decade of sanctions, Iraqis living under government control have seen no improvement in their situation as regards political and civil rights. The same government continues in power and has not been persuaded by international pressure to modify its conduct in internal affairs. The international community's rhetoric condemning the abuse of human rights in government-controlled Iraq has had little or no practical outcome. Whatever form future international action might take, it is critical that its impact inside Iraq is properly monitored by the UN. A major weakness of the present embargo is that systematic impact assessment was not included in its terms and monitoring of its socio-economic effects has been very limited.  [7]

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        In conclusion, economic sanctions can involve, with military aggression like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the abuse of human rights and unfair trading practices such as “oil for food”. Economic sanctions often affect populations of the offending state more than its government.  Sanctions can be organized by individual states or by international organizations and can become an established feature of international politics. In this respect economic sanctions can be the same as to starve the people into submission and cause millions of deaths. Iraq is one of the best example of all.

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Hu, SuYan's Reflections::   This project is going to be my last project in MBHS because I am a senior, and there's one more month; then I am graduating so this project is really meaningful to me.  I hope this project could help out all other students and others.  For me, being honest, I think that doing this kind of project was very helpful.  It also will upgrade students' knowledge.  But one problem is that I can't find much information about this topic. Although I did find some, the articles were too long, so I needed to spend lots of time reading them and figuring out what they were about and then summarize them.  Anyhow, finally we did it.  After finishing this project I did learn lot of things.  Before doing this project, I knew nothing about economic sanctions, but after finishing all this work, I learned lot of stuff related to economic sanctions.  For example:  all people in Iraq had suffered from the economic sanctions.  Also thousands of children died because of economic sanctions.  Not just that, but children's futures in Iraq were all damaged and there is no hope for them.  From all this suffering, I think we really need to think of STOPPING economic sanctions.  For this project, most of the work was done by me, like the web page, all the searching, the work log.  The questions that I answered are questions #1 and #4. 

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Zheng, MeiYan's Reflection:  This is my last project in Mr.  Elfrank's class because I am a senior now and I will graduate  this June.  So, doing this project was really meaningful to me too. I didn't know what economic sanctions were before I did this project.  I thought I would not going to finish this project. Cause it is very hard to me to finish it. But, after I was working with my group, I knew the meaning of economic sanctions. I think my group helped me a lot.

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Liu, XiuPing's Reflection:  I have learned and know lots of information on economics in this world through this project. I also learned how the countries changed their economics by the government getting developed.  Some countries in the Middle East are always at war or poor.  They always put the economy, because they know they have to develop the economy first if they want to develop their own countries. This project was also telling me that the economy is the most important elements for today's society.  I think I did well in this project, this project was pretty successful.

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