When von Sponeck's predecessor Denis Halliday resigned his post, he likened the isolation in which Iraqi children are forced to live to post-World War I Germany, from which emerged the Nazi rise to power and the Third Reich. We are in the process of destroying an entire country. It is a simple and as terrifying as that. The economic blockade has already left at least one million dead, according to the UN itself. UN agencies put the figure for children's deaths at half a million.
Unofficial estimates are even higher, with deaths of children alone estimated at one million.
An Iraqi child dies from malnutrition, diarrhoea, leukaemia or curable infectious disease every ten minutes. Thirteen percent of Iraqi infants do not live to see their first birthday. Iraqi hospitals say they are continuously short of even the most basic medical supplies, and thousands of adults and children have died of preventable diseases. Iraqi physicians were once medical leaders of the Arab world, but have not been able to access international medical texts and journals since 1990. Unemployment is estimated at between 60 and 75 percent.