BY ROHAN PEARCE

In a December 27 BBC radio interview, Ruud Lubbers, UN high commissioner for refugees, said that a war on Iraq “will be a disaster from a humanitarian perspective”. This is confirmed by confidential draft UN report obtained by the Cambridge-based Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq, which predicts around 2 million Iraqis will be internally displaced by the war.

The leaked report states: “The population in immediate need of humanitarian intervention [following the war] and that are expected to be accessible, i.e., those in the south, [will total] 5.4 million”. It estimates that up to 500,000 Iraqis will require medical treatment.

“Furthermore”, the report states, “the outbreak of diseases, in epidemic if not pandemic proportions, is very likely. Diseases such as cholera and dysentery [will] thrive ... measles, meningitis and the like will be ever present...

“It is estimated that the nutritional status of some 3.03 million persons countrywide will be dire and that they will require therapeutic feeding. This consists of 2.03 million severely and moderately malnourished children under five and one million pregnant and lactating women.”

The report predicts widespread destruction of what little remains of Iraq's medical, transport, water and electricity infrastructure.

From Green Left Weekly, January 15, 2003.
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