--- Thursday August 12 1:59 AM ET
UNICEF Releases Child Deaths Survey
By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The first survey of child deaths in Iraq since the 1991 Persian Gulf War shows the death rate among children under 5 who live in government-controlled areas has doubled.
But the death rate among children in the autonomous north, where the United Nations runs a humanitarian relief operation, dropped significantly during the same period, the U.N. Children's Fund said in a report to be released today.
The findings show that Iraq is faced with an ongoing humanitarian emergency, according to Carol Bellamy, UNICEF's executive director.
UNICEF recognizes that economic sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 are intended to promote peace and international security, Bellamy said.
``But our concern is that ... they should be designed and implemented in such a way as to avoid a negative impact on children,'' she said.
UNICEF officials say a host of factors have influenced the child mortality rate, including the sanctions, two wars, a collapsed economy, and Baghdad's own response.
The survey is likely to inflame the ongoing debate in the U.N. Security Council over whether to ease the sanctions - regardless of whether Iraq has fully complied with U.N. demands to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction.
The UNICEF findings back a trend that U.N. officials identified in a recent report: U.N. humanitarian relief operations were more effective in areas outside the control of President Saddam Hussein.
The survey found that in government-controlled central and southern Iraq - home to 85 percent of the country's population - children under age 5 are dying at more than twice the rate they were 10 years ago.
Between 1984 and 1989, there were 56 deaths of children under 5 per 1,000 live births compared to 131 deaths per 1,000 live births from 1994 to 1999. UNICEF said this puts the child mortality rate in most of Iraq on a par with rates in Haiti and Pakistan.
By contrast, in the autonomous northern region, the mortality rate of children under 5 declined by over 20 percent - from 90 deaths per 1,000 live births during the years 1989-94 to 72 deaths per 1,000 live births between 1994 and 1999.
Bellamy also noted that Iraq's child mortality rate was on the decline in the 1980s. If that decline had continued in the 1990s, there would have been a half-million fewer deaths of children under 5 from 1991 to 1998.
UNICEF urged the international community to provide more money for humanitarian efforts in Iraq and called on the U.N. committee overseeing sanctions and the Iraqi government to give priority to directly improving the well-being of children.
The survey also said the Iraqi government should implement nutrition programs, adopt a national policy promoting breast-feeding, and replace the baby formula in the current food rations with additional food for nursing mothers.
UNICEF surveyed nearly 24,000 randomly selected households in south and central Iraq between February and May, in cooperation with the Iraqi government, and 16,000 households in the north, in cooperation with local authorities. All interviewers were trained health workers.
Bellamy said the surveys were reviewed by a panel of independent experts. UNICEF's chief statistician, Gareth Jones, said the margin of error was less than 5 percent.
In an effort to help ordinary Iraqis cope with sanctions, the United Nations has allowed Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian aid since 1996.
In a two-year review of the oil-for-food program released in April, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said billions of dollars worth of food and medicine had been delivered, but the program cannot - and was never meant to - meet all the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people.
While the United Nations runs the relief operation in northern Iraq, it relies on the Iraqi government to implement the program in the central and southern regions.