Posted on 03/31/2005 9:17:20 PM PST by NormsRevenge
GENEVA (AP) - The U.S. human rights delegation Thursday rejected a U.N. monitor's claim that child malnutrition had risen in Iraq and said, if anything, health conditions have improved since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Right Commission's expert on the right to food, cited U.S. and European studies Wednesday in telling the commission that acute malnutrition rates among Iraqi children under 5 rose late last year to 7.7 percent from 4 percent after Saddam's ouster in April 2003. Ziegler blamed the war for the situation.
"First, he has not been to Iraq, and second, he is wrong," said Kevin E. Moley, U.S. ambassador to U.N. organizations in Geneva and a member of the American delegation to the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission.
"He's taking some information that is in itself difficult to validate and juxtaposing his own views - which are widely known," Moley said, referring to Ziegler's opposition to the U.S. military intervention in the country.
Moley rejected the rate cited by Ziegler and said malnutrition in Iraq was notoriously difficult to gauge. He noted that some estimates had put it at 11 percent in 1996 and 7.8 percent in 2000, while Saddam was still in power.
"The surveys that have been taken ... have indicated that the recent rise in malnutrition rates began between 2002 and 2003 under the regime of Saddam Hussein," Moley said.
"If anything, vaccination, food aid ... has improved dramatically since the fall of Saddam Hussein," he added.
Ziegler told the commission that more than a quarter of Iraqi children don't get enough to eat.
The U.S. delegation said it hoped the U.N.commission will instead focus on the world's worst human rights violators. It said it planned to lodge resolutions asking the commission to condemn abuses by two such countries, Cuba and Belarus.
Censure by the commission involves no penalties but draws attention to a country's record.
Former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, who is chairing the American delegation, said such countries should also be ineligible to sit on the commission.
"The commission must be made up of firefighters, not of arsonists," he said.
Boschwitz, a Republican senator from Minnesota from 1979 until 1991, cited a report released Thursday by the U.S. campaign group Freedom House, which said that six of the world's most repressive regimes are on the U.N. panel that is supposed to uphold human rights.
China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, which have "dire human rights situations," work in concert to prevent the commission from combatting abuses, said a statement by the private group based in Washington, D.C.
The report was released in Geneva to coincide with the annual six-week meeting of the U.N. commission.
"Rather than serving as the proper international forum for identifying and publicly censuring the world's most egregious human rights violators, the (commission) instead protects abusers, enabling them to sit in judgment on democratic states that honor and respect the rule of law," said Jennifer Windsor, Freedom House's executive director.
Other members of the commission include countries that Freedom House classifies as "not free," including Bhutan, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Swaziland and Togo.
Windsor welcomed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's proposal to create a body consisting of members with the highest human rights standards.
"The commission must be made up of firefighters, not of arsonists," he said.
Boschwitz, a Republican senator from Minnesota from 1979 until 1991, cited a report released Thursday by the U.S. campaign group Freedom House, which said that six of the world's most repressive regimes are on the U.N. panel that is supposed to uphold human rights.
China, Cuba, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, which have "dire human rights situations," work in concert to prevent the commission from combatting abuses, said a statement by the private group based in Washington, D.C.
Talking lizards are employed at the U.N.?
Perplexing Starvation
Today the BBC reports that Iraqi children are now starving. _______________________________________________________________ Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led intervention - to nearly 8% by the end of last year, it says. The report was prepared for the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. _______________________________________________________________ Strangely, prior to the war the leftists were saying _______________________________________________________________ Malnutrition is a key underlying cause of child mortality in Iraq. The UNICEF-supported Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2000 has shown that 30% of children under-five suffer from chronic malnutrition. _______________________________________________________________ And no, there were no dancing Iraqi unicorns between 2000 and 2003. _______________________________________________________________ The ensuing 14 years of economic and military warfare meant that by 2003: Iraq’s child malnutrition rate had escalated to approximately 30%. _______________________________________________________________ So we continue to live in that strange BBC UNworld, where 8% is double 30%.
rofl. Don't get bitten by those things!
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