Petition on Behalf of the Children of Iraq Submitted to the United Nations Charging President Bush and U.S. Authorities Actions Constitute Acts of Genocide

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Fall, 2001 by Francis Boyle

(17.) The immediate lifting of the sanctions would drastically reduce the number of Iraqi children who will die in the upcoming months from malnutrition and disease and would relieve the suffering of the innocent Iraqi population which is now bearing the burden of the embargo.

(18.) Approximately 500 Iraqi children are dying each day from disease, malnutrition, and lack of proper medical treatment due to the continuation of the international economic embargo and bilateral economic sanctions upon Iraq that have been organized and imposed by the Respondents.

III. CONTENTIONS

(19.) The Harvard Study Team Report, Public Health in Iraq After the Gulf War, estimated that as of May 1991, 55,000 additional deaths of Iraqi children under five had already occurred because of the Gulf Crisis, and projected that at least 170,000 Iraqi children under five will die in the coming year from the delayed effects of the Gulf Crisis. The Study also emphasized that these projections are conservative: "In all probability, the actual number of deaths of children under five will be much higher."

(20.) The continuation of multilateral and bilateral economic sanctions against Iraq prevents the massive infusion of international humanitarian assistance necessary to prevent these mortality projections from becoming a reality. The Harvard Report directly raises the question whether Respondents are responsible for the commission of the international crime of genocide against the Applicants, The 4.5 Million Children of Iraq, because of their obstinate insistence that economic sanctions be maintained in order to produce the deposition of the President of Iraq despite the fact that the original purpose for their imposition was achieved with the so-called "liberation" of Kuwait.

(21.) Respondent United States of America is a Contracting Party to the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, which will hereinafter be referred to as "the Genocide Convention" for sake of convenience.

(22.) Article I of the Genocide Convention provides that the Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law, which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

(23.) Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of "genocide" as follows:

Article II. In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

(24.) Article III of the Genocide Convention provides that the following acts shall likewise all be punishable: (a) genocide; (b) conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) attempt to commit genocide; (e) complicity in genocide.