Report: Iraq Child Mortality Rate Soars
May 8, 2007 - 2:34am
By MARIA CHENG
AP Medical Writer
LONDON (AP) - The chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age 5 has plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world since 1990, according to a report released Tuesday, which placed the country last in its child survival rankings.
One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005, according to the report by Save the Children, which said Iraq ranked last because it had made the least progress toward improving child survival rates.
Iraq's mortality rate has soared by 150 percent since 1990. Even before the latest war, Iraq was plagued by electricity shortages, a lack of clean water and too few hospitals.
The publication, which used data from 1990-2005, also determined that gains in survival rates in some of the world's poorest countries _ including Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland _ were declining.
The vast majority of child deaths _ more than nine in 10 _ occur in just 60 developing countries, the report said. Of the approximately 10 million children under age 5 who die every year, most could be saved with cheap solutions, like nets to protect against mosquito-borne malaria or antibiotics to treat pneumonia, according to the report.
"These aren't intractable problems," Dr. William Foege, of the Emory University School of Public Health, wrote in a foreword to the report. "It is simply wrong for only the few to have access to all of the tools for survival because of where they live."
About 4 million children die of complications in the first month after birth every year, according to Save the Children. Other causes of death for young children include diarrhea, pneumonia and measles, the group reported.
Among industrialized countries, Iceland had the best child survival rate, and Romania the worst. The U.S. placed 26th, tied with Croatia, Estonia and Poland. Nearly seven children die for every 1,000 live births in the United States. That was more than double the rate in Iceland, and 75 percent higher than rates in the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan and Slovenia.
Among developing countries, Egypt fared the best _ lowering its child mortality rate by 68 percent largely by improving care for pregnant women, ensuring the presence of a skilled attendant during childbirth, and providing better family planning help.
Since 1994, Egypt has also increased health spending by more than 200 percent.
___
On the Net:
http://www.savethechildren.org/
(Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
Moa'amal Mohammed, age seven, sits alone in a classroom in western Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, May 7, 2007. Due to security concerns, many children are not attending their classes. (AP Photo/Khalid Mohammed) By MARIA CHENG
AP Medical Writer
LONDON (AP) - The chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age 5 has plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world since 1990, according to a report released Tuesday, which placed the country last in its child survival rankings.
One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005, according to the report by Save the Children, which said Iraq ranked last because it had made the least progress toward improving child survival rates.
Iraq's mortality rate has soared by 150 percent since 1990. Even before the latest war, Iraq was plagued by electricity shortages, a lack of clean water and too few hospitals.
The publication, which used data from 1990-2005, also determined that gains in survival rates in some of the world's poorest countries _ including Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland _ were declining.
The vast majority of child deaths _ more than nine in 10 _ occur in just 60 developing countries, the report said. Of the approximately 10 million children under age 5 who die every year, most could be saved with cheap solutions, like nets to protect against mosquito-borne malaria or antibiotics to treat pneumonia, according to the report.
"These aren't intractable problems," Dr. William Foege, of the Emory University School of Public Health, wrote in a foreword to the report. "It is simply wrong for only the few to have access to all of the tools for survival because of where they live."
About 4 million children die of complications in the first month after birth every year, according to Save the Children. Other causes of death for young children include diarrhea, pneumonia and measles, the group reported.
Among industrialized countries, Iceland had the best child survival rate, and Romania the worst. The U.S. placed 26th, tied with Croatia, Estonia and Poland. Nearly seven children die for every 1,000 live births in the United States. That was more than double the rate in Iceland, and 75 percent higher than rates in the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan and Slovenia.
Among developing countries, Egypt fared the best _ lowering its child mortality rate by 68 percent largely by improving care for pregnant women, ensuring the presence of a skilled attendant during childbirth, and providing better family planning help.
Since 1994, Egypt has also increased health spending by more than 200 percent.
___
On the Net:
http://www.savethechildren.org/
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label children. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Israel's violations of the right to life
Source: Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS) Israel's violations of the right to life: Palestinian child fatalities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory during 2006
Date: 01 May 2007
Israel's violations of the right to life: Palestinian child fatalities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory during 2006
Introduction
Throughout the second Intifada, beginning in September 2000, Israel has engaged in gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. Israeli military activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT ) has been excessive and disproportionate. Routinely employing sophisticated military weaponry, including missiles and F16 war planes, Israeli forces have acted with insufficient, or no, regard for the lives of civilian residents of the OPT resulting in particularl y high numbers of civilian casualties.
During this period Palestinian children have suffered countless violations of their rights, including violations of the right to life. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2006 there were an estimated 2.1 million children living in the OPT. These children constitute over half (52.3%) of the Palestinian population in the OPT.(1) Their right to life, survival and development is the most fundamental of all human rights of the child.(2) In spite of this, Israel has repeatedly and arbitrarily deprived Palestinian children of the right to life, in violation of article 6 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which it is a State Party.
In 2006, the Israeli military's lack of respect for Palestinian human rights and for the guidelines that seek to protect civilians in periods of armed conflict (as embodied in international humanitarian law) continued. Throughout the year, the Israeli military employed violent, excessive and disproporti onate force against Palestinian civilians. This was evident in the bombardment of civilian houses and infrastructure; the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian activists resulting in the killing of civilian by-standers; and the opening of random gunfire leading to the deaths of children either whilst inside their homes or playing near them. Despite Israel's withdrawal of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the territory remains occupied. As a result Palestinian civilians, including children, were exposed to numerous violations of international humanitarian law in 2006. Two massive Israeli military offensives in the Gaza Strip during 2006 resulted in high civilian casualties and wide-scale targeting of civilian infrastructure.
In total, Israeli military forces killed 124 Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during 2006. This figure brings the number of child deaths caused by military or settler violence during the second Intifada to 852. The number of Palestinian children killed in 2006 is more than double those killed in 2005, when a total of 52 children were killed. Eighty-five percent (85%) of child fatalities in 2006 occurred in the Gaza Strip.
Notes:
(1) Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (20 November 2006): "On the Occasion of 'International Child Day"
(2) In accordance with definition set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a "child" is anyone under 18 years of age.
Full_report (pdf* format - 64.2 Kbytes)
Friday, April 27, 2007
US Admits Killing Iraqi Women and Children in Baghdad Airstrike
Iraqi civilians believed dead in US strike-military
26 Apr 2007 10:17:15 GMT
More BAGHDAD, April 26 (Reuters) - Two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in a U.S. air strike aimed at al Qaeda militants north of Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said.
Soldiers were searching buildings near Taji, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, for a car bomb network with links to al Qaeda when they came under small arms fire, a military statement said.
The soldiers called in an air strike and four insurgents were killed.
"Additionally, coalition forces believe that two women and two children were also killed during the strike," the statement said. "The bodies were left on the site."
No other details were immediately available.
"Unfortunately, al Qaeda in Iraq continues to use women and children in their illegal activities," U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said in the statement.
The military said explosives and weapons were also found in the building.
The U.S. military rarely admits killing Iraqi civilians in strikes against suspected insurgents. It says insurgents often place women and children in harm's way with their activities.
26 Apr 2007 10:17:15 GMT
More BAGHDAD, April 26 (Reuters) - Two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in a U.S. air strike aimed at al Qaeda militants north of Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said.
Soldiers were searching buildings near Taji, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, for a car bomb network with links to al Qaeda when they came under small arms fire, a military statement said.
The soldiers called in an air strike and four insurgents were killed.
"Additionally, coalition forces believe that two women and two children were also killed during the strike," the statement said. "The bodies were left on the site."
No other details were immediately available.
"Unfortunately, al Qaeda in Iraq continues to use women and children in their illegal activities," U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said in the statement.
The military said explosives and weapons were also found in the building.
The U.S. military rarely admits killing Iraqi civilians in strikes against suspected insurgents. It says insurgents often place women and children in harm's way with their activities.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
US to make history trying alleged child war criminal
Mark Tran
Wednesday April 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Wednesday April 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
 |  A flag at Camp Delta, Guantánamo Bay. Photograph: AP |
A human rights group today attacked a US decision to file murder charges against a Canadian national and alleged Taliban fighter who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15.
Omar Khadr was wounded by US soldiers during a battle near Khost, Afghanistan, and taken into US custody in July 2002. He has spent most of the past five years in the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay.
During his capture he was shot three times and is nearly blind in one eye as a result of his injuries. The US military says Mr Khadr threw a grenade that killed a US Green Beret sergeant, Christopher Speer, and wounded another sergeant, Layne Morris.
Mr Khadr's Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Marine lieutenant colonel Colby Vokey, said the US would become the first country in modern history to try a war crimes suspect who was a child at the time of the alleged violations if a trial went ahead.
Mr Khadr has been charged with murder, attempted murder, providing support to terrorism, conspiracy and spying under rules for military trials adopted last year. The conspiracy charge is based on acts allegedly committed before Mr Khadr was 10, according to his defence team.
Amnesty International strongly criticised the decision to subject Mr Khadr to a military tribunal.
"To have held a 15-year-old boy in the harsh and lawless conditions of Guantánamo for five years has already been a travesty of justice - and to put him before an unfair 'military commission' trial simply adds to a disgraceful record in his case," said the Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen.
Ms Allen said the US authorities should transfer his case to a civilian federal court on the US mainland.
Toronto-born Mr Khadr faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
The Pentagon said Mr Khadr must be held accountable.
"The defence department will continue to uphold the law and bring unlawful enemy combatants to justice through the military commissions process," it said.
Mr Speer's widow and Mr Morris filed a civil lawsuit against Mr Khadr and his father. In February, a judge awarded them $102.6m (£51m).
Dennis Edney, a Canadian lawyer for Mr Khadr's family, said the new tribunal system, which allows coerced and hearsay evidence, "provides Mr Khadr with almost no chance of proving his innocence.
"The aim is to provide a showcase to justify the US administration decision to arrest Mr. Khadr and other men like him in the first place," Mr Edney told the Associated Press.
Mr Khadr's attorneys urged Canada and the US to negotiate a "political resolution" of the case to spare Mr Khadr a guaranteed conviction by "one of the greatest show trials on earth".
Several of Mr Khadr's family members have been accused of ties to Islamist extremists. His Egyptian-born father, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was killed in Pakistan in 2003 alongside senior al-Qaida operatives and Canada is holding Mr Khadr's brother Abdullah on a US extradition warrant accusing him of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.
Mr Khadr will be the second prisoner to face terror charges under new military tribunals after the US supreme court in June struck down the previous military tribunal system at Guantánamo as unconstitutional. Congress then passed a law establishing a new system, which is also being challenged.
In March, the military tribunal at Guantánamo sentenced an Australian, David Hicks, to nine months in prison after he pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism - the first conviction at a US war crimes trial since the second world war.
Under an agreement with the court, he will serve his sentence in an Australian prison, but must remain silent about any alleged abuse while in US custody. Prosecutors say they plan to charge as many as 80 of the 370 men held at Guantánamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
"We are increasingly concerned that with 80% of Guantánamo detainees now held in solitary confinement, there is mounting evidence that some are dangerously close to full-blown mental and physical breakdown," Amnesty said.
Monday, April 23, 2007
One child killed by Israeli army gunfire during invasion of Palestinian village
One child killed by Israeli army gunfire during invasion of village near Ramallah
Sunday April 22, 2007 16:04 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News ghassanb at imemc dot org
On Sunday morning one Palestinian child was shot and killed by Israeli army fire during an invasion of the village of Dier Abu Mish'al, located west of the central West Bank city of Ramallah
A massive Israeli force invaded the village on Sunday at dawn. Troops then searched and ransacked scores of residents' homes. During the search campaign local youth hurled stones at the invading soldiers who opened fire randomly at the them and nearby houses, killing one boy.
Medical sources stated that Kareem Zahran, 14, sustained critical wounds during the clashes. Soldiers detained the boy until he died from severe bleeding. After two hours the Israeli forces handed the boy's body to a Palestinian ambulance which took him to a hospital in Ramallah city.
On the way to the hospital the army also detained the ambulance car from one hour, the medical team reported. On Sunday afternoon hundreds of Palestinians along side with Zahran's family members took to the streets in Ramallah city during the boy's funeral which ended with the burial of the child in the city cemmetry, local sources reported.
With Zahran's death, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli army gunfire in the past 24 hours in the West Bank, mounts to 8. In Jenin city, in the northern part of the West Bank, a 17-year old girl named Boshra Naji was shot and killed on Saturday evening, by Israeli military fire during an invasion of Jenin refugee camp.
The invasion is the third in less than 24 hours. On Saturday evening, soldiers assassinated three Palestinian resistance fighters during an invasion of Kafer Dan town, west of Jenin. Also in Jenin, one resident was killed on Saturday at dawn after the army invaded Kafer Dan village, west of the city. Two other fighters were assassinated on Saturday night after midnight in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
U.S. Convoy Kills Afghan Boy
Wednesday April 18, 2007 12:46 PM
AP Photo KAB101
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A U.S.-led coalition convoy hit a boy in Kabul and killed him, while Afghan and coalition forces arrested five suspected al-Qaida on Wednesday in eastern Afghanistan.
Acting on intelligence, the joint forces arrested the ``al-Qaida associates'' during a raid on a compound in the Chaparhar district of Nangarhar province, a coalition statement said, adding that no shots were fired and no serious injuries were reported.
On Tuesday in Kabul, a coalition convoy was passing through a bazaar when the boy stepped into the road from behind a large truck, a coalition statement said. The convoy stopped to provide first aid and the boy was evacuated for medical care, but died of his injuries, it said.
Also Tuesday, a powerful remote-controlled bomb destroyed a U.N. vehicle in southern Afghanistan's main city, killing four Nepalese guards and an Afghan driver, officials said.
The attack on a three-vehicle U.N. convoy in Kandahar was the bloodiest in Afghanistan for the world body since the hard-line Taliban militia's 2001 ouster, and illustrated how violence still impedes much-needed reconstruction.
The convoy was beside a canal when unidentified assailants detonated the charge. It hit a gray sport-utility vehicle, killing the four guards and their driver, police and the U.N. said.
An Associated Press reporter saw two charred bodies lying on the road nearby. The explosion blew off two of the car's doors and gouged a crater in the road.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the attack came a day after a Human Rights Watch report accused Taliban militants of committing war crimes by targeting civilians.
The rights group said militants killed nearly 700 Afghan civilians in 2006 - more than three times the civilian deaths attributed to U.S. and NATO forces, which have been criticized for using excessive force in civilian areas.
Violence in the south and east has created a vicious cycle for President Hamid Karzai and his international backers: Militants and criminals scare off aid agencies, fueling resentment against the government, especially among ethnic Pashtuns, from whom the Taliban draws its main support.Tuesday, April 17, 2007
INDEX ON IRAQ: A JOURNEY IN HELL
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
by Sarah Meyer
Girls look through a fence at a refugee camp in Mosul April 5, 2007.About 250 families moved from Tal Afar town to camps in Mosul since
last weeks' violence attacks. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled al-Mousuly
"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" Dante, Inferno.
1. General
2. Children of Iraq
3. Cities in Iraq
4. Health in Iraq
5. Refugees in Iraq
6. Human Rights in Iraq
7. Death in Iraq
8. Resistance in Iraq
9. Videos
GENERAL
Video. Iraq street scenes before Shock and Awe.
Life in Hell: A Baghdad Diary.
06.08.06. A. Ghosh, Time / Truth Out.
In Baghdad, the American Army Erects Walls Between Communities.
16.08.06. R. Ourdan, le Monde / Truth Out.
THE CHILDREN OF IRAQ
IRAQ: Children living without limbs lack support.
04.02.07. Irin. According to Save the Children, a UK-based NGO, many children were killed or injured in the initial US-led invasion of Iraq in April and March 2003. The NGO said the injured children continue to suffer the effects of the conflict, have become more vulnerable to chronic diseases and lack assistance. … The exact number of children living without limbs in Iraq, as a result of the war and the daily violence countrywide, is not known. However, local NGOs estimate that they must be in the thousands.
"Every explosion, air strike, fighting or targeting in Iraq makes a child injured. In addition, we cannot forget the remaining UXOs [unexploded ordnance] whose victims are mostly children," Khalid Ala'a, spokesman for local NGO Keeping Children Alive (KCA), said. "If you make a summation of all these children, they are going to be thousands and we cannot forget that the number of them killed since April 2003 by diseases, explosions or bullets, has reached 260,000," Ala'a added.
IRAQ: 4.5 million children undernourished.
05.03.07. Reuters / Irin.
60,000 Marriages broken by Iraq, Including Mine.
05.03.07. Stacy Bannerman, Alternet.
Third of Iraqi children now malnourished four years after US invasion.
16.03.07. Caritas Report
70% of Iraqi schoolchildren show symptoms of trauma.
17.04.07. USA Today.
CITIES IN IRAQ
In Baghdad, the American Army Erects Walls Between Communities.
16.08.06. R. Ourdan, le Monde / Truth Out.
Insecurity prevents clean-up of Iraq pollution.
07.02.07. Reuters. "We have identified more than 350 priority polluted areas, which include amounts of hazardous chemicals and depleted uranium," Environment Minister Nermeen Othman said on the sidelines of a major U.N. environment conference in Kenya. Environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists have linked depleted uranium used in U.S. and British munitions to higher Iraqi cancer rates and birth defects after the 1991 war and called for swift clean up campaigns. … polluted "hot spots", like the Khan Dhari petrochemicals site west of Baghdad that was partly burned down by looters during the war in March 2003.
The Locusts
26.02.07. Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research. Killing Civilization in Mesopotamia. After the illegal invasion, the US military did the unthinkable. They made a camp in the great turquoise memorial to the half million lost souls of the Iran-Iraq warThe locusts in uniform, who have destroyed Iraq, humanity, sustenance, its history, predating the time of Christ and the Prophet Mohammed, are never, it seems, satiated or satisfied. From the early defiling (ongoing) of Mosques, cemeteries (Muslim, Christian, Yazidi ...) even the sacred tributes to the memory of the martyrs are being destroyed and defiled.
Iraq: New Martial Law Powers Threaten Basic Rights
01.03.07. uruknet. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's new security plan for Baghdad grants military commanders sweeping powers to arrest people and restrict their basic freedoms of speech and association, Human Rights Watch said today.
BAGHDAD CHAOS PLAN.
03.03.07. McClatchy. Iraqi government call it (BAGHDAD SECURITY PLAN) and we call it (BAGHDAD CHAOS PLAN) every single member in the security system taking money from the people to be released like for example I have paid in one day 30,000 Iraqi dinars to the traffic police and the peace keeping forces to be forgiven for the mistake that I did, my mistake was that I was driving my car in the street to go to my work in the time that I not suppose to be driving I mean the government have sill! y law obligate me to drive three days a week in the street in Baghdad because the numbers of the car as you know the (odds and even ) numbers my car was odd and I was driving in the even day so can you imagine he took 15,000 Iraqi dinars to him self instead giving me the 30,000 Iraqi dinars penalty recede from the government and the keeping peace forces guy did the same thing at the time that it is non of his responsibility….
Full electricity in Baghdad 6 years off.
03.03.07. Baltimore Sun. ( is that a promise?) Getting full-time electric power turned on in Baghdad, a key wartime goal toward which the United States has spent $4.2 billion dollars, won't be accomplished until the year 2013, U.S. officials said yesterday, in what others called a significant setback for the new U.S. initiatives to quell Iraq's bloody insurgency.
US asks us to pick up litter while city is in ruins, says mayor of Baghdad.
04.03.07. Damien McElroy, Telegraph.
HEALTH IN IRAQ
Four years into the occupation: No health for Iraq.
22.03.07. Dr. Bert De Belder, Globalreserch.ca/uruknet. Iraq’s health status, four years into the occupation, is nothing short of disastrous. Iraq’s health index has deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1950s, says Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nation’s Population Division and an Iraq specialist. People’s health status is determined by social, economic and environmental factors much more than by the availability of healthcare. Not surprisingly, all these factor! s have deteriorated in the course of the occupation...
Shortage of safe water risks cholera in Iraq -U.N..
22.03.07. Suleiman al-KhalidiReuters / uruknet. United Nations agencies working in Iraq warned on Thursday a chronic shortage of safe drinking water risks causing more child deaths and an outbreak of waterborne disease such as cholera during the summer.
Thousands without food and supplies due to failing distribution system.
17.04.07. Report, IRIN. "The effectiveness and efficiency of the PDS ... have declined significantly," said the report issued on 10 April by the Washington-based NGO Refugees International (RI), an advocacy group.
REFUGEES OF IRAQ
Iraqis on the Run.
04.02.07. P. Cockburn, Counterpunch / ICHBlog. Iraq is experiencing the biggest exodus in the Middle East since Palestinians were forced to flee in 1948 upon the creation of Israel. "We were forced to leave our house six months ago and since then we have moved more than eight times," said Abu Mustafa, a 56-year-old man from Baghdad. "Sectarian violence has now even reached the displacement camps but we are tired of running away. Sometimes I have asked myself if it is not better to die than to live like a Bedouin all my life."
War in Iraq Propelling A Massive Migration.
04.02.07. Washington Post. As the fourth year of war nears its end, the Middle East's largest refugee crisis since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948 is unfolding in a climate of fear, persecution and tragedy.
Nearly 2 million Iraqis -- about 8 percent of the prewar population -- have embarked on a desperate migration, mostly to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The refugees include large numbers of doctors, academics and other professionals vital for Iraq's recovery. Another 1.7 million have been forced to move to safer towns and villages inside Iraq, and as many as 50,000 Iraqis a month flee their homes, the U.N. agency said in January.
The State Department's Rosy Deception on Iraq Refugees.
09.02.07. Electronic iraq. The message from the State Department paints a picture that is filled with the positivity of good works being carried out in the name of America. From Jordan the view is different.
Iraq: The facts on displaced persons and refugees">Iraq: The facts on displaced persons and refugees.
28.02.07. Relief Web. The situation currently facing Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons has very quickly become one of the most pressing humanitarian crises in the world.
Leaving Iraq: Tales from a new diaspora.
04.03.07. The Star. REFUGEES | Nearly 2 million Iraqis, about 8 per cent of the pre-war population, are fuelling a desperate migration.
UN Plans to Open Iraqi Refugee Office in Jordan.
06.03.07. Democracy Now.
Europe Struggles with Inlfux of Iraqi Refugees.
06.03.07. NPR/ICH. After four years of chaos and violence, nearly two million Iraqis remain outside their country, according to the UN agency for refugees.
Video Report.. Iraq’s growing refugee crisis. Channel 4 News (12.03.07)
No Child Left Behind? Iraqi Edition.
13.03.07. R. Palta, Mother Jones / uruknet. 'few of the estimated 172,000 to 230,000 school-aged Iraq War refugees living Jordan are enrolled in school. Those children, many of whom are from middle class Iraqi families, lack the proper residency status to qualify for public school, and their families lack the finances to enroll their children in private institutions. As a result, over a hundred thousand Iraqi children have been out of school for as many as 4 years now--and that's just counting those in Jordan. '
U.N. seeks $1.7M to feed Iraqi refugees.
15.03.07. AP. 'The World Food Program has launched an appeal for $1.7 million to help feed tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees who are continue to arrive in Syria and increasingly without the resources to sustain themselves.'
More Iraqi refugees expected in Europe.
16.03.07. AP / The State. The number of Iraqi refugees arriving in Europe is expected to double to 40,000 in 2007 based on trends from the first two months of the year, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday
World 'ignoring Iraqi refugees'.
20.03.07. BBC/legitgov. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says there has been an "abject denial" around the world of the humanitarian impact of invading Iraq. Syria says it is home to 1.2m Iraqi refugees, with up to 800,000 in Jordan.
Thousands without food and supplies due to failing distribution system.
22.03.07. REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL
Iraqi Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: A Deepening Humanitarian Crisis?.
23.03.07. CRS REPORT.
Iraq: Time to Acknowledge and Address the Displacement Crisis.
03.04.07. Kristele Younes, Refugees International /alertnet. 'The humanitarian and displacement crisis in Iraq is growing in intensity and gravity. The UN estimates that more than two million Iraqis are now refugees in neighboring countries and more than 1.9 million have fled for safer areas within Iraq. Of these internally displaced people (IDPs), more than 730,000 have fled since the Samarra Shrine bombing of February 2006, which intensified the sectarian violence that is tearing Iraq apart.'
Child Refugees from Iraq Require Targeted Assistance in Host Countries.
09.04.07. Reuters. ' As violence in Iraq continues to add to the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East in half a century, World Vision has launched a combined advocacy and relief effort to assist children and families fleeing to neighboring countries. Some 2 million Iraqis have left their volatile homeland and many are struggling to cope without access to health care, legal employment or education for their children in host countries.'
Refugees Speak of Escape from Hell.
11.04.07. Dahr Jamail, IPS / uruknet. 'Refugees from Iraq scattered around Damascus describe hellish conditions in the country they managed to leave behind.'
Iraq: New humanitarian crisis looms as more than three million Iraqis displaced by war.
16.04.07. Amnesty International Press Release.
UN Refugee Agency Turns Spotlight on Iraqis.
17.04.07. Khody Akhavi,, Electronic Iraq. Nearly four million Iraqis have been displaced in and outside their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, making it the largest exodus of people in the Middle East since the creation of Israel in 1948. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, on Tuesday will convene a two-day conference in Geneva to address Iraq's deepening humanitarian crisis.
US and UK Bear Special Duty to Aid Refugees.
17.04.07. Statement, Human Rights Watch. Iraq's neighbors are closing off escape routes to Iraqi asylum seekers, just as the international community has begun to respond to the 2 million refugees from the war, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released today. ... The briefing paper focuses on new restrictive measures taken by Jordan and Egypt to prevent more refugees from coming. Syria, which is hosting about 1 million Iraqis, denied visas to Human Rights Watch researchers seeking to document their situation. Saudi Arabia is building a US$7 billion high-tech barrier on its border with Iraq to keep Iraqis out, while Kuwait is categorically rejecting Iraqi asylum seekers.
HUMAN RIGHTS IN IRAQ
War Crimes Committed by the United States in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability
10.10.06. Report, Consumers for Peace. This report was prepared by Consumers for Peace.org with the advice of Karen Parker, noted lawyer in human rights and humanitarian law. Ms. Parker is President of the San Francisco-based Association of Humanitarian Lawyers www.humanlaw.org) and Chief Delegate to the United Nations for the Los Angeles-based International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project (IED/AHL), an accredited non-governmental organization on the U.N. Secretary-General’s list.
See also http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15261.htm
Routine Practices of Torture by US Forces in Iraq: Testimony of Abbas Z. Abid to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
23.02.07. Global Research.ca.
Rape Cases emerge From the Shadows
01.03.07. Dahr Jamail. Reports of the gang-rape of 20-year-old Sabrine al-Janabi by three policemen has set off new demands for justice from Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
Iraq: An ever-worsening crisis.
11.04.07. International Red Cross (ICRC) news. In a report issued today in Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expresses alarm about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Iraq and calls for urgent action to better protect civilians against the continuing violence.
FULL ICRC REPORT. IRAQ: CIVILIANS WITHOUT PROTECTION.
Outrage over Imminent Execution of Iraqi Women
02.03.07. Dahr Jamail. Three young women accused of joining the Iraqi insurgency movement and engaging in "terrorism" have been sentenced to death, provoking protest from rights organisations fearing that this could be the start of more executions of women in post-Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
DEATH IN IRAQ
REPORTS
The Human Cost of the War in Iraq: A Mortality Study, 2002-2006
09.10.06. Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland; School of Medicine, Al Mustansiriya University, Baghdad, Iraq; in cooperation with the Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. See also related Appendix
ACLU Releases Files on Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq
12.04.07. ACLU. Americans Have a Right to Unfiltered Information About the Human Costs of War, ACLU Says. NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today made public hundreds of claims for damages by family members of civilians killed or injured by Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ACLU received the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request it filed in June 2006.
IRAQ: Violence distressing mental state of population.
31.01.07. Irin. Bullets and bombs are killing thousands of civilians every month in Iraq while the psychological impact of the ongoing violence is affecting the mental health of millions and is a major cause for concern for future generations, psychologists say. See Guardian headlines: here.
ARTICLES
Almost 2,000 bodies taken to Baghdad morgue (July).
09.08.06. Reuters.
U.S. count of Baghdad deaths excludes car bombs, mortar attacks
08.09.06. M Brunswick / Z. Obeid, McClatchy.
4,000 Iraq Police Killed in Past 2 Years
06.10.06. AP / Forbes.
Medics Beg For Help As Iraqis Die Needlessly
20.10.06. J. Laurance, Independent. Medical facts for Iraq.
Another US crime in Ashaqi Photographic evidence
08.12.06. Roads to Iraq, uruknet.
For hanging of Saddam Hussein, see ‘Updates, Index on US Bases, Baghdad
Unacceptable death toll in Iraq, say Americans
28.02.07. Angus Reid. 77% of respondents believe the number of U.S. military casualties and Iraqi civilian casualties has been unacceptable.
Occupation killed a family of seven members in Iraq
25.02.07. Roads to Iraq. - Residents in Aana city in Anbar-province reported that US occupation forces destroyed the Communication and Post Center building. ... An eyewitness said that US soldiers put explosives in the building and destroy it, no one injured in the process but part of the city hospital which is close to the building was damaged.
- Reported on Qudspress, an Iraqi ambulance man, reported that US military killed a family of seven people with their taxi driver, in their way to leave Iraq for Jordan. ... The eyewitness Ahmed Khalaf Aljoaani said: American forces opened fire on the car "GMC" with a family in it, a father, the mother and five children and the taxi driver in their way to Jordan to escape the deteriorating situation, all killed. The American forces blocked the area of the incident, which was on the international highway, near Al-Qaim city for an hour, re-opening after the removal of the bodies, and prevented two photo-journalists from photographing the accident.
Another Casualty: Coverage of the Iraq War
24.03.07. Dahr Jamail. 'Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists. Along with names and dates, the Brussels Tribunal has listed the circumstances under which Iraqi media personnel have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. This extremely credible report cites 195 as dead. If non-Iraqi media representatives are included, the figure goes beyond 200. Both figures are well in excess of the media fatalities suffered in Vietnam or during World War II"
(from Foreign Policy in Focus ). 'The primary reason why reporting from Iraq is dangerous for all journalists is the horrific security situation. Iraqi journalists reporting from the streets are in perpetual danger. If any of the countless militias does not want a certain story made public, it will make sure that the journalist has filed his or her last story. Not to mention the scores of reporter deaths which have been the combined handiwork of the Iraqi government, occupation forces and/or criminal gangs. . Despite President Bush’s assertion that life in Iraq is improving, a senior Iraqi journalist was found dead in the capital on March 3, 2007. On the same day the body of the managing editor of Baghdad’s al-Safir newspaper, Jamal al-Zubaidi, was found shot in the head.'
Counting the cost
27.03.07. R. Horton, Guardian. Richard Horton. It's time we held our leaders to account for the 650,000 Iraqi dead. 'Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week, the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American- and British-led invasion in March 2003.'
Fallujah Fears a 'Genocidal Strategy'
30.03.07. Ali al-Fadhily, Dahr Jamail website, Interpress. Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy.
US compensation files for Iraqi, Afghan civilian deaths released under FOIA
12.04.07. The Jurist. A searchable database documenting civilian casualties. There are 479 files from Iraq and 17 from Afghanistan. 'While some claims were denied because the incidents arose from enemy action or occurred during combat situations, other incidents resulted in cash payments. When the military admits fault, the payments are labeled as "compensation." "Condolence" payments, which the military offers as expressions of sympathy, can be awarded without military admission of fault and are capped at $2500.'
Iraq: US Data on Civilian Casualties Raises Serious Concerns
12.04.07. Human Rights Watch. US government documents made public by court order raise serious concerns about the number of civilian casualties caused by American soldiers and contractors in Iraq and the standards under which it pays compensation to Iraqi victims, Human Rights Watch said today. The records, which document compensation claims made by the families of Iraqis killed by US troops, were revealed today by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
The assassination of two professors from Mosul University
04.07. Al mosul. Another wave of assassination of Academics in Mosul. Dr Talal Al-Jalili and Dr Jaffer. For further information on academic deaths, see The Brussels Tribunal website See thoughtful article by Joshua Holland, Violence like that at Virginia Tech is commonplace in Iraq's universities
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MEANWHILE: THE US/UK ARE ON ANOTHER PLANET
New York dinner raises $18m. for IDF (Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces). Bizarre and obscene?
One Picture Sits Over Differing Surveys.
26.03.07. Ali al-Fadhily, Inter Press Service. 'The Sunday Times of London published the results of a survey Mar. 18 carried out by the British firm Opinion Research Business that claimed that most Iraqis prefer life under the new government to life under Saddam Hussein.' Who paid for this “survey”?
RESISTANCE IN IRAQ
The Iraqi resistance only exists to end the occupation.
12.04.07. Haifa Zangana. 'It is important to recognise that the resistance was born not only of ideological, religious and patriotic convictions, but also as a response to the reality of the brutal actions of the occupation and its administration. It is a response to arbitrary break-ins, humiliating searches, arrests, detention and torture. According to the Red Cross, "the number of people arrested or interned by the multinational forces has increased by 40% since early 2006. The number of people held by the Iraqi authorities has also increased significantly ... Many of the security detainees are women who have been subjected to abuse and rape and who are often arrested as a means to force male relatives to confess to crimes they have not committed. According to the Iraqi MP Mohamed al-Dainey, there are 65 documented cases of women's rape in occupation detention centres in 2006. Four women currently face execution - the death penalty for women was outlawed in Iraq from 1965 until 2004 - for allegedly killing security force members. These are accusations they deny and Amnesty International has challenged. . There is only one solution to this disaster, and that is for the US and Britain to accept that the Iraqi resistance is fighting to end the occupation.’
Sadr's Rising Star to Eclipse Bush's Surge? .
17.04.07. Electronic Iraq writes: "The prospect of Sadr's appeal extending to a section of the
Sunni community, with the tacit support of grand ayatollah Ali Sistani, is the nightmare scenario that the Bush
administration most dreads. Yet it may come to pass." SUPERB MUST READ ARTICLE by Dilip Hiro. 'This indeed was the case with the demonstration on April 9 in Najaf. Over a million Iraqis, holding aloft thousands of national flags, marched, chanting, "Yes, yes, Iraq/No, no, America" and "No, no, American/Leave, leave occupier." Both the size of the demonstration and its composition were unprecedented. "There are people here from all different parties and sects," Hadhim al-Araji, Sadr's representative in Baghdad's Kadhimiya district, told reporters. "We are all carrying the national flag, a symbol of unity. And we are all united in calling for the withdrawal of the Americans."... Crucially, the mammoth demonstration reflected the view prevalent among Iraqi lawmakers. Last autumn, 170 of them in a 275-member Parliament, signed a motion, demanding to know the date of a future American withdrawal.' The demonstrators arrived from all over the country in response to a call by Muqtada al-Sadr, a radical Shiite cleric, to demand an end to foreign occupation on the fourth anniversary of the end of Baathist rule in Baghdad.
Sadr raises pressure for US to withdraw
17.04.07. Damien McElroy, The Telegraph. The United States faced a fresh challenge to its presence in Iraq yesterday when supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr's radical Shia Muslim movement quit the Baghdad government to demand a deadline for withdrawal of its troops.
VIDEOS
Video. U.S. soldiers shooting Iraqi civilians (23.03.07) 2 min.
Video. US soldiers destroyed civilians houses in Baghdad (25.03.07, Roads to Iraq / uruknet)...
Expat film maker charts Baghdad's dying past.
03.04.07. reuters.
Video. Je m'appelle Baghdad
Video. US_Soldiers_Run_an_Iraqi_Off_the_Road. It would probably be nice to check on the guy that you just caused to roll his truck. To see if he's, you know, dead or something.
Unspeakable Grief and Horror.
Thewe. Photos and stories.
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Sarah Meyer is a researcher living in the U.K.
The url to Index on Iraq: A Journey in Hell is: http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2007/04/index-on-iraq-journey-in-hell.html
A short url is: http://tinyurl.com/2g6x7d
This blog will also appear on The BRussels Tribunal website .
Other blogs about Iraq by Sarah Meyer
US Bases in Iraq. Part I: Baghdad
US/UK Bases in Iraq. Part II. The South: Falcon-al-Sarq, Tallil, Shaibah
Iraqs US/UK Permanent Bases: Intentional Obfuscation
Iraq: The Occupation is the Disease
Iraq: Assassination of Academics: The Jalili Report
Prisons and Torture in Iraq
Victims of Violence
07.04.06. (Updated regularly) S. Meyer, Index Research. The results of ‘post-traumatic-stress on soldiers
Iraq: Security Companies and Training Camps
Totalitarianism and Obedience
13.02.07. Sarah Meyer, Index Research.
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Tags: Index Research, Iraq, Iraq Health, Iraq Cities, Refugees, Human Rights, Death in Iraq,
Monday, April 16, 2007
Trauma severe for Iraqi children
Study: In Baghdad, 70% showing signs
By James Palmer
USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — About 70% of primary school students in a Baghdad neighborhood suffer symptoms of trauma-related stress such as bed-wetting or stuttering, according to a survey by the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
The survey of about 2,500 youngsters is the most comprehensive look at how the war is affecting Iraqi children, said Iraq's national mental health adviser and author of the study, Mohammed Al-Aboudi.
"The fighting is happening in the streets in front of our houses and schools," Al-Aboudi said. "This is very difficult for the children to adapt to."
The study is to be released next month. Al-Aboudi discussed the findings with USA TODAY.
Many Iraqi children have to pass dead bodies on the street as they walk to school in the morning, according to a separate report last week by the International Red Cross. Others have seen relatives killed or have been injured in mortar or bomb attacks.
"Some of these children are suffering one trauma after another, and it's severely damaging their development," said Said Al-Hashimi, a psychiatrist who teaches at Mustansiriya Medical School and runs a private clinic in west Baghdad. "We're not certain what will become of the next generation, even if there is peace one day," Al-Hashimi said.
The study was conducted last October in the Sha'ab district of northern Baghdad. The low- to middle-income neighborhood is inhabited by a mix of Shiites and Sunni Arabs. Al-Aboudi said he believes the sample was broadly representative of conditions throughout the capital.
In the study, schoolteachers were asked to determine whether randomly selected students showed any of 10 symptoms identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as signs of trauma. Other symptoms included voluntary muteness, declining performance in school or an increase in aggressive behavior.
The teachers received training from Iraqi psychologists on how to identify and help students cope with trauma-related stress, Al-Aboudi said.
The study "shows the impact of the violence and insecurity on the children and on children's mental health," said Naeema Al-Gasseer, the Iraqi representative of the WHO. "They have fear every day."
The Iraqi government is aware of the problem but largely unequipped to address it, said Ali al-Dabbagh, a government spokesman. "Until we have proper security in Baghdad, there's not much we can do to help these children," al-Dabbagh said in Washington.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Letter reveals U.S. intent at No Gun Ri: Hundreds, mostly women and children, slaughtered
By CHARLES J. HANLEY and MARTHA MENDOZA, Associated Press Writers April 13, 2007
Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was "not deliberate," the Army has acknowledged it found but did not divulge that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.
Six years after declaring the U.S. killing of Korean War refugees at No Gun Ri was "not deliberate," the Army has acknowledged it found but did not divulge that a high-level document said the U.S. military had a policy of shooting approaching civilians in South Korea.
The document, a letter from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the State Department in Washington, is dated the day in 1950 when U.S. troops began the No Gun Ri shootings, in which survivors say hundreds, mostly women and children, were killed.
Exclusion of the embassy letter from the Army's 2001 investigative report is the most significant among numerous omissions of documents and testimony pointing to a policy of firing on refugee groups — undisclosed evidence uncovered by Associated Press archival research and Freedom of Information Act requests.
South Korean petitioners say hundreds more refugees died later in 1950 as a result of the U.S. practice. The Seoul government is investigating one such large-scale killing, of refugees stranded on a beach, newly confirmed via U.S. archives.
No Gun Ri survivors, who call the Army's 2001 investigation a "whitewash," are demanding a reopened investigation, compensation and a U.S. apology.
Harvard historian Sahr Conway-Lanz first disclosed the existence of Ambassador John H. Muccio's 1950 letter in a scholarly article and a 2006 book, "Collateral Damage." He uncovered the declassified document at the U.S. National Archives.
When asked last year, the Pentagon didn't address the central question of whether U.S. investigators had seen the document before issuing their No Gun Ri report. Ex-Army Secretary Louis Caldera suggested to The Associated Press that Army researchers may have missed it.
After South Korea asked for more information, however, the Pentagon acknowledged to the Seoul government that it examined Muccio's letter in 2000 but dismissed it. It did so because the letter "outlined a proposed policy," not an approved one, Army spokesman Paul Boyce argues in a recent e-mail to the AP.
But Muccio's message to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk states unambiguously that "decisions made" at a high-level U.S.-South Korean meeting in Taegu, South Korea, on July 25, 1950, included a policy to shoot approaching refugees. The reason: American commanders feared that disguised North Korean enemy troops were infiltrating their lines via refugee groups.
"If refugees do appear from north of US lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot," the ambassador told Rusk, cautioning that these shootings might cause "repercussions in the United States." Deliberately attacking noncombatants is a war crime.
Told of the Pentagon's rationale for excluding the Muccio letter from its investigative report, No Gun Ri expert Yi Mahn-yol, retired head of Seoul's National Institute of Korean History, suggested the letter was suppressed because it was "disadvantageous" to the Pentagon's case.
"If they set it aside as nothing significant, we can say that it was an intentional exclusion," he said.
Conway-Lanz called the Pentagon's explanation "thoroughly unconvincing."
"The Muccio letter in plain English says, `Decisions were made,'" the historian noted.
No Gun Ri survivors said U.S. soldiers first forced them from nearby villages on July 25, 1950, and then stopped them in front of U.S. lines the next day, when they were attacked without warning by aircraft as hundreds sat atop a railroad embankment near No Gun Ri, a village in central South Korea. Troops of the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment followed with ground fire as survivors took shelter in twin underpasses of a concrete railroad bridge.
The killings remained hidden from history until an AP report in 1999 cited a dozen ex-soldiers who corroborated the Korean survivors' accounts, prompting the Pentagon to open its inquiry after years of dismissing the allegations.
The Army veterans' estimates of dead ranged from under 100 to "hundreds." Korean survivors say they believe about 400 were killed. Korean authorities have certified the identities of at least 163 dead or missing.
No Gun Ri, where no evidence emerged of enemy infiltrators, was not the only such incident. As 1950 wore on, U.S. commanders repeatedly ordered refugees shot, according to declassified documents obtained by the AP.
One incident, on Sept. 1, 1950, has been confirmed by the declassified official diary of the USS DeHaven, which says that the Navy destroyer, at Army insistence, fired on a seaside refugee encampment at Pohang, South Korea. Survivors say 100 to 200 people were killed. South Korean officials announced in February they would investigate.
More than a dozen documents — in which high-ranking U.S. officers tell troops that refugees are "fair game," for example, and order them to "shoot all refugees coming across river" — were found by the AP in the investigators' own archived files after the 2001 inquiry. None of those documents was disclosed in the Army's 300-page public report.
South Koreans have filed reports with their government of more than 60 such episodes during the 1950-53 war.
Despite this, the Army's e-mail to the AP maintains, as did the 2001 report, "No policy purporting to authorize soldiers to shoot refugees was ever promulgated to soldiers in the field."
The 2001 official report instead focused on a single document issued the day the No Gun Ri shootings began, a Korea-wide Army order saying refugees should be stopped from crossing U.S. lines. That order did not say how they should be stopped, but retired Army Col. Robert M. Carroll, a lieutenant at No Gun Ri, said the meaning was clear.
"What do you do when you're told nobody comes through?" Carroll said in an AP interview before his death in 2004. If they didn't stop, he said, "we had to shoot them to hold them back."
Other ex-soldier eyewitnesses, including headquarters radiomen, told the AP that orders came down to the 7th Cavalry's 2nd Battalion command post, and were relayed through front-line companies at No Gun Ri, to open fire on the mass of village families, baggage and farm animals.
Such communications would have been recorded in the 7th Cavalry Regiment's journal, but that log is missing without explanation from the National Archives. Without disclosing this crucial gap, the Army's 2001 report asserted there were no such orders. It suggested soldiers shot the refugees in a panic, questioned estimates of hundreds of dead, and absolved the U.S. military of liability.
The Army report didn't disclose that veterans told Army investigators of "kill" orders, of seeing stacks of dead at No Gun Ri, and of earlier documentation of the killings. Such interview transcripts have been obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. Examples:
_Ex-Air Force pilot Clyde Good, 87, of Melbourne, Fla., told investigators his four-plane mission, under orders, attacked 300-400 refugees in mid-1950 on suspicion the group harbored infiltrators. "I didn't like the idea," he said. "They had some young ones, too. ... kids on the road." A South Korean government report in 2001 said five ex-pilots told Pentagon interviewers of such orders. The U.S. report claimed "all pilots interviewed" knew nothing about such orders.
_The U.S. report said the No Gun Ri shootings weren't documented at the time. It didn't disclose that ex-Army clerk Mac W. Hilliard, 78, of Weed, Calif., testified he remembered typing into the now-missing regimental journal an officer's handwritten report that 300 refugees had been fired on. "If you see 'em, kill 'em" was the general attitude toward civilians, Hilliard told the AP in reaffirming his testimony.
_The Army report said ex-GIs estimating large numbers of dead were using "guesswork," that none got a close-up look. But in a transcript obtained by the AP, ex-soldier Homer Garza told a Pentagon interrogator he was sent on patrol through one underpass and saw heaps of bodies.
"There were probably 200 or 300 civilians there — babies, old papa-sans," Garza, 73, of Hurst, Texas, said in a subsequent AP interview. Most may have been dead, but it was hard to tell because "they were stacked on top of one another," said Garza, who retired as a command sergeant major, the Army's highest enlisted rank.
In addition, the 2001 report by the Army inspector-general didn't disclose the existence of July 1950 mission reports from the Air Force's 35th Fighter-Bomber Squadron that said pilots attacked apparent refugee groups and struck at or near No Gun Ri on the dates of the killings.
In describing another critical document, a July 25, 1950, memo from the Air Force operations chief in Korea, the Army report dropped its key passage: a paragraph saying pilots, at the Army's request, were strafing refugee groups approaching U.S. lines. The Army report portrayed the strafing as a proposal, not a fact, as the Army now is doing with the Muccio letter.
The Pentagon has told the South Korean government the ambassador's letter, evidence that senior Washington officials knew of a policy to shoot South Korean refugees, does not warrant a reopening of the No Gun Ri investigation.
Seoul accepts that U.S. position, said a South Korean Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Informed of the Pentagon position, the No Gun Ri survivors issued a statement. "We cannot accept the U.S. Defense Department's false explanation and are indignant over the repeated lies by the U.S. Defense Department," it said.
AP Writer Jae-soon Chang in Seoul and AP Investigative Researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Poll: 10% of Palestinian children have lasting malnutrition effects
Last update - 21:02 11/04/2007
By The Associated Press
About 10 percent of Palestinian children suffer permanent effects from malnutrition, according to a survey published Wednesday, a result of widespread poverty in the West Bank and Gaza.
The root cause is poverty, according to Khaled Abu Khaled, who directed the study for the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. He said the numbers are up slightly over the past two years.
"One obvious effect of malnutrition is stunted growth among children, which has increased about three percent in the last two years," he said.
"This is a chronic chronic. Even with interventions, the rates don't go down fast," he said.
Other surveys have shown that about half of the Palestinians are living in poverty.
Six years of violence between Palestinians and Israelis have crippled economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza. A year of international aid sanctions following an election victory by the Islamic Hamas and its takeover of the Palestinian government has intensified the hardships.
The findings were based on a survey conducted in November and December covering 13,238 residents of the West Bank and Gaza, according to a statement. It found that 13.2 percent of the children of Gaza suffer stunted growth, compared to 7.9 percent in the West Bank.
While incidents of stunted growth were up slightly, Abu Khaled noted a decrease in cases of extremely low body weight - another common symptom of acute malnutrition. He said the children of northern Gaza were most likely to suffer stunted growth as well as low birth weight.
The survey showed that 17 percent of the Palestinian population is made up of children under the age of five, and 46 percent are under 15.
By The Associated Press
About 10 percent of Palestinian children suffer permanent effects from malnutrition, according to a survey published Wednesday, a result of widespread poverty in the West Bank and Gaza.
The root cause is poverty, according to Khaled Abu Khaled, who directed the study for the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. He said the numbers are up slightly over the past two years.
"One obvious effect of malnutrition is stunted growth among children, which has increased about three percent in the last two years," he said.
"This is a chronic chronic. Even with interventions, the rates don't go down fast," he said.
Other surveys have shown that about half of the Palestinians are living in poverty.
Six years of violence between Palestinians and Israelis have crippled economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza. A year of international aid sanctions following an election victory by the Islamic Hamas and its takeover of the Palestinian government has intensified the hardships.
The findings were based on a survey conducted in November and December covering 13,238 residents of the West Bank and Gaza, according to a statement. It found that 13.2 percent of the children of Gaza suffer stunted growth, compared to 7.9 percent in the West Bank.
While incidents of stunted growth were up slightly, Abu Khaled noted a decrease in cases of extremely low body weight - another common symptom of acute malnutrition. He said the children of northern Gaza were most likely to suffer stunted growth as well as low birth weight.
The survey showed that 17 percent of the Palestinian population is made up of children under the age of five, and 46 percent are under 15.
Report: “68 women gave birth on checkpoints, 33 infants and 4 women died”
Wednesday April 11, 2007 07:29
by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies saed at imemc dot org
The Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens Rights (PICCR) reported that Israeli troops stationed at hundreds of roadblocks in the occupied territories barred dozens of pregnant women from crossing the checkpoints while in labor; 34 infants and four women died on their roadblocks.
The Commission reported that soldiers forced 68 pregnant women to give birth on road blocks after barring them from crossing as they were being transferred to hospitals and medical centers.
Also, the PICCR said that the Israeli procedures complicated the lives of the Palestinian civilians including pregnant women by enforcing harsh conditions and carrying illegal practices at these checkpoints.
Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada on September 28 2000 until July 2006, 68 pregnant women had to give birth at checkpoints, and that 34 infants and 4 pregnant women died on these checkpoints.
by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies saed at imemc dot org
The Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens Rights (PICCR) reported that Israeli troops stationed at hundreds of roadblocks in the occupied territories barred dozens of pregnant women from crossing the checkpoints while in labor; 34 infants and four women died on their roadblocks.
The Commission reported that soldiers forced 68 pregnant women to give birth on road blocks after barring them from crossing as they were being transferred to hospitals and medical centers.
Also, the PICCR said that the Israeli procedures complicated the lives of the Palestinian civilians including pregnant women by enforcing harsh conditions and carrying illegal practices at these checkpoints.
Since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada on September 28 2000 until July 2006, 68 pregnant women had to give birth at checkpoints, and that 34 infants and 4 pregnant women died on these checkpoints.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
HOW ISRAEL KILLS KIDS
Haaretz
Twilight Zone / It's from Allah, the soldier said
By Gideon Levy
They divided the nights between them. He went to sleep early and got up in the middle of the night so his wife could sleep for a few hours. Day and night, they never took their eyes off their sick baby. Khaled, their youngest child, was now five months old and very sick. From the age of four weeks he had had episodes of shortness of breath and a trembling that seized his entire little body. Every two to three weeks, they had to rush him to the hospital in Ramallah. He would be placed in an oxygen tent for a few hours before being discharged. That is is how the doctors saved him, time after time. When he gets a little bigger, the doctors told them, he will require surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain.
The parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, had already lost two children to illness, seven years apart. Having known such sorrow, they never left their precious Khaled alone for a moment.
That's how it was exactly three weeks ago, as well, on Thursday night. Daoud went to bed early, at 7 P.M., in anticipation of getting up later to relieve Sana. Slightly after midnight, she woke him. Khaled was having another attack of shortness of breath and convulsions.
Their village, Kufr Ayn, is impressive to look at. Its houses sit on a hilltop overlooking a lush valley in the heart of the West Bank, north-west of Ramallah, about halfway from there to Qalqilyah. The narrow road leading up to the village passes through olive groves and by the neighboring villages of Beit Rima and Qarwat Bani Zeid. The Palestinian who hitches a ride with us at the intersection tells us about Muwafiz Rimawi, 34, a man from her village who was seriously injured in an accident at his home and delayed at the Atara checkpoint for about half an hour, until he eventually died from the bleeding in his brain. This was about a month ago.
A picture of Khaled is affixed to a mirror beneath a red heart in the family's modest home in the center of the village. His death has left the Kafihs with three children, two sons and a daughter.
Daoud, 43, has taught English for 22 years at the high school in Qarwat Bani Zeid. Sana, also 43, knits kippot (skullcaps) at home - one a day - and sells them for NIS 5 each to a trader who then sells them to Jewish settlers in the West Bank, or in Israel. One wonders if their wearers have any idea who made them.
Khaled was born at the government hospital in Ramallah on October 9, 2006. He was a large baby, weighing in at over four kilos, and born healthy. The problems began when he was a month old. On March 9, when he was exactly five months old, he suffered another attack of shortness of breath and convulsions. Sana woke Daoud. It was shortly after midnight. The couple was well-practiced by now.
Daoud called a friend with a Mercedes ("the fastest car in the village") and asked him to hurry over. Five minutes later, the friend was at their door and in the meantime the Fakihs had packed milk and medications for their convulsing baby. The attack, says Daoud, wasn't so serious at this stage. In a previous episode, ten days earlier, they made it to the Ramallah hospital in 20 minutes. "I told the driver: Drive fast so we'll get to the hospital in time," Daoud recalls.
The yellow iron gate between the village and the main road was open that night. The Mercedes raced toward its destination; Sana held Khaled, panting and convulsing, in the back seat. After about fifteen minutes, they reached the Atara checkpoint north of Ramallah, one of the toughest and cruelest in the West Bank, especially of late. At this hour there were no other cars waiting.
The driver stopped at the stop sign in front of the checkpoint, as required. After about a minute, a soldier emerged and approached them. In the back seat, Khaled's condition was worsening. His breath was getting shorter and his shaking was getting stronger.
"Where are you going?," the soldier asked, and the driver replied in his meager Hebrew: "To the hospital in Ramallah." The soldier asked for the ID cards of all the passengers. Daoud appealed to him: "Before the IDs, listen to me. We have a very sick baby in the car and I want to get him to the hospital on time, before it's too late."
The soldier heard him, says Daoud, but didn't show any signs of interest. He didn't even bother to glance in the back seat, to see their convulsing baby. "He didn't care. He wasn't deaf. He heard, but he didn't even ask, 'Where's the baby?'"
The Fakihs had passed this checkpoint several times en route to the hospital with their baby, and the soldiers had always let them through quickly as soon as they saw the sick infant. Not this time. This soldier insisted on collecting each person's ID card in turn. "I didn't have a choice so I handed him the ID cards," Daoud says. The soldier took the IDs cards and walked away from the car, toward the checkpoint. Khaled's condition continued to worsen.
Usually, Daoud says, the ID check takes just a minute or two, especially when the checkpoint is totally deserted, as it was that night. But not this time. After a wait of about five desperate minutes, Daoud called out to the soldier: "Soldier, soldier, excuse me, but I want to get to the hospital. My baby is in serious condition." "What are you yelling about?," the young soldier scolded Daoud, "Don't yell." Daoud was upset. "Look at the baby, he's going to die! Afterward you do whatever you want." The soldier turned away without saying anything.
Sana became hysterical. With Khaled in her arms, she began crying and shouting: "My baby... My baby is going to die!" Daould was desperate. "At that moment, I wanted to get out of the car, but I couldn't. They could shoot me, beat me, or delay me even longer. I chose to wait in the car. Waiting was better than getting out."
More long, fateful minutes that felt like an eternity passed. It was almost 1:00 A.M. Finally, the soldier came back. "Open the car," he instructed. The soldier checked the car, going through package after package, the one with the diapers and the one with the medicines and the milk, and so on. Daoud shouted: "I don't have time. Don't make my baby die here. He's dying." Sana's crying kept getting louder, the baby gasped harder for breath.
Sana grabbed the soldier by the arm. "Look at the baby," she pleaded. The startled soldier turned his weapon toward her. Then he relaxed and shined his flashlight on the baby's face. "What happened to the baby?," he asked. Daoud told him the baby was dying. "I'll go and bring you the ID cards," the soldier said, but not before pausing to check the trunk and to inspect the spare tire and whatever was under it - all by the book, the book of the occupation.
But then the most terrible thing of all happened: Khaled suddenly stopped shaking. His tiny hands dropped to his sides and his breathing became slow and heavy. "Our baby is dead!," wailed Sana, while Daoud tried to reassure her: "No he's not, just be patient and strong, now we're on our way."
The soldier brought back the ID cards. "Drive to the hospital quickly," he told them. Sana said there was no point now in going to the hospital. Next to Bir Zeit, they stopped the car to check on the baby's condition. Khaled was no longer breathing. Daoud told Sana that there was no point in continuing. "Our baby is dead." But Sana insisted that they continue on to the hospital, maybe the doctors could revive Khaled.
At 1:20 A.M. they arrived at the emergency room. The doctors examined Khaled, put him into an oxygen tent but then had to pronounce him dead. "There's nothing we can do for him now," they told the parents.
On the way home, having left their dead baby at the hospital, they passed through the Atara checkpoint again. "Where's the baby?," the soldier asked. "My baby died," Daoud answered him. "Died? Why?," asked the soldier. "He died, because I waited here at the checkpoint," Daoud said. "No, it's from Allah," the soldier replied.
The IDF Spokesman's Office said this week: "The IDF has no knowledge of this incident, nor has any complaint about such a matter been received by the Liaison and Coordination Administration."
Daoud says he doesn't want to exaggerate in estimating the delay at the checkpoint, "so the Israelis won't say we're lying like they said after the man from Beit Rima was delayed at the same checkpoint, until he died from bleeding in his brain." Daoud says the delay was between 20 and 25 minutes.
Khaled was buried in the village cemetery the following day.
We are invited to view a video of the funeral on the home computer of Daoud's brother. Khaled is lying on his deathbed, a sweet baby with open eyes and mouth, a Palestinian flag covering his tiny body. First his grandmother, then his mother, kisses the body. A group of gloomy-looking men sit silently in the shade of the olive trees on the edge of the cemetery, and finally there is a shot of the checkpoint, with its concrete blocks and soldiers, separating Ramallah from the surrounding villages.
Twilight Zone / It's from Allah, the soldier said
By Gideon Levy
They divided the nights between them. He went to sleep early and got up in the middle of the night so his wife could sleep for a few hours. Day and night, they never took their eyes off their sick baby. Khaled, their youngest child, was now five months old and very sick. From the age of four weeks he had had episodes of shortness of breath and a trembling that seized his entire little body. Every two to three weeks, they had to rush him to the hospital in Ramallah. He would be placed in an oxygen tent for a few hours before being discharged. That is is how the doctors saved him, time after time. When he gets a little bigger, the doctors told them, he will require surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain.
The parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, had already lost two children to illness, seven years apart. Having known such sorrow, they never left their precious Khaled alone for a moment.
That's how it was exactly three weeks ago, as well, on Thursday night. Daoud went to bed early, at 7 P.M., in anticipation of getting up later to relieve Sana. Slightly after midnight, she woke him. Khaled was having another attack of shortness of breath and convulsions.
Their village, Kufr Ayn, is impressive to look at. Its houses sit on a hilltop overlooking a lush valley in the heart of the West Bank, north-west of Ramallah, about halfway from there to Qalqilyah. The narrow road leading up to the village passes through olive groves and by the neighboring villages of Beit Rima and Qarwat Bani Zeid. The Palestinian who hitches a ride with us at the intersection tells us about Muwafiz Rimawi, 34, a man from her village who was seriously injured in an accident at his home and delayed at the Atara checkpoint for about half an hour, until he eventually died from the bleeding in his brain. This was about a month ago.
A picture of Khaled is affixed to a mirror beneath a red heart in the family's modest home in the center of the village. His death has left the Kafihs with three children, two sons and a daughter.
Daoud, 43, has taught English for 22 years at the high school in Qarwat Bani Zeid. Sana, also 43, knits kippot (skullcaps) at home - one a day - and sells them for NIS 5 each to a trader who then sells them to Jewish settlers in the West Bank, or in Israel. One wonders if their wearers have any idea who made them.
Khaled was born at the government hospital in Ramallah on October 9, 2006. He was a large baby, weighing in at over four kilos, and born healthy. The problems began when he was a month old. On March 9, when he was exactly five months old, he suffered another attack of shortness of breath and convulsions. Sana woke Daoud. It was shortly after midnight. The couple was well-practiced by now.
Daoud called a friend with a Mercedes ("the fastest car in the village") and asked him to hurry over. Five minutes later, the friend was at their door and in the meantime the Fakihs had packed milk and medications for their convulsing baby. The attack, says Daoud, wasn't so serious at this stage. In a previous episode, ten days earlier, they made it to the Ramallah hospital in 20 minutes. "I told the driver: Drive fast so we'll get to the hospital in time," Daoud recalls.
The yellow iron gate between the village and the main road was open that night. The Mercedes raced toward its destination; Sana held Khaled, panting and convulsing, in the back seat. After about fifteen minutes, they reached the Atara checkpoint north of Ramallah, one of the toughest and cruelest in the West Bank, especially of late. At this hour there were no other cars waiting.
The driver stopped at the stop sign in front of the checkpoint, as required. After about a minute, a soldier emerged and approached them. In the back seat, Khaled's condition was worsening. His breath was getting shorter and his shaking was getting stronger.
"Where are you going?," the soldier asked, and the driver replied in his meager Hebrew: "To the hospital in Ramallah." The soldier asked for the ID cards of all the passengers. Daoud appealed to him: "Before the IDs, listen to me. We have a very sick baby in the car and I want to get him to the hospital on time, before it's too late."
The soldier heard him, says Daoud, but didn't show any signs of interest. He didn't even bother to glance in the back seat, to see their convulsing baby. "He didn't care. He wasn't deaf. He heard, but he didn't even ask, 'Where's the baby?'"
The Fakihs had passed this checkpoint several times en route to the hospital with their baby, and the soldiers had always let them through quickly as soon as they saw the sick infant. Not this time. This soldier insisted on collecting each person's ID card in turn. "I didn't have a choice so I handed him the ID cards," Daoud says. The soldier took the IDs cards and walked away from the car, toward the checkpoint. Khaled's condition continued to worsen.
Usually, Daoud says, the ID check takes just a minute or two, especially when the checkpoint is totally deserted, as it was that night. But not this time. After a wait of about five desperate minutes, Daoud called out to the soldier: "Soldier, soldier, excuse me, but I want to get to the hospital. My baby is in serious condition." "What are you yelling about?," the young soldier scolded Daoud, "Don't yell." Daoud was upset. "Look at the baby, he's going to die! Afterward you do whatever you want." The soldier turned away without saying anything.
Sana became hysterical. With Khaled in her arms, she began crying and shouting: "My baby... My baby is going to die!" Daould was desperate. "At that moment, I wanted to get out of the car, but I couldn't. They could shoot me, beat me, or delay me even longer. I chose to wait in the car. Waiting was better than getting out."
More long, fateful minutes that felt like an eternity passed. It was almost 1:00 A.M. Finally, the soldier came back. "Open the car," he instructed. The soldier checked the car, going through package after package, the one with the diapers and the one with the medicines and the milk, and so on. Daoud shouted: "I don't have time. Don't make my baby die here. He's dying." Sana's crying kept getting louder, the baby gasped harder for breath.
Sana grabbed the soldier by the arm. "Look at the baby," she pleaded. The startled soldier turned his weapon toward her. Then he relaxed and shined his flashlight on the baby's face. "What happened to the baby?," he asked. Daoud told him the baby was dying. "I'll go and bring you the ID cards," the soldier said, but not before pausing to check the trunk and to inspect the spare tire and whatever was under it - all by the book, the book of the occupation.
But then the most terrible thing of all happened: Khaled suddenly stopped shaking. His tiny hands dropped to his sides and his breathing became slow and heavy. "Our baby is dead!," wailed Sana, while Daoud tried to reassure her: "No he's not, just be patient and strong, now we're on our way."
The soldier brought back the ID cards. "Drive to the hospital quickly," he told them. Sana said there was no point now in going to the hospital. Next to Bir Zeit, they stopped the car to check on the baby's condition. Khaled was no longer breathing. Daoud told Sana that there was no point in continuing. "Our baby is dead." But Sana insisted that they continue on to the hospital, maybe the doctors could revive Khaled.
At 1:20 A.M. they arrived at the emergency room. The doctors examined Khaled, put him into an oxygen tent but then had to pronounce him dead. "There's nothing we can do for him now," they told the parents.
On the way home, having left their dead baby at the hospital, they passed through the Atara checkpoint again. "Where's the baby?," the soldier asked. "My baby died," Daoud answered him. "Died? Why?," asked the soldier. "He died, because I waited here at the checkpoint," Daoud said. "No, it's from Allah," the soldier replied.
The IDF Spokesman's Office said this week: "The IDF has no knowledge of this incident, nor has any complaint about such a matter been received by the Liaison and Coordination Administration."
Daoud says he doesn't want to exaggerate in estimating the delay at the checkpoint, "so the Israelis won't say we're lying like they said after the man from Beit Rima was delayed at the same checkpoint, until he died from bleeding in his brain." Daoud says the delay was between 20 and 25 minutes.
Khaled was buried in the village cemetery the following day.
We are invited to view a video of the funeral on the home computer of Daoud's brother. Khaled is lying on his deathbed, a sweet baby with open eyes and mouth, a Palestinian flag covering his tiny body. First his grandmother, then his mother, kisses the body. A group of gloomy-looking men sit silently in the shade of the olive trees on the edge of the cemetery, and finally there is a shot of the checkpoint, with its concrete blocks and soldiers, separating Ramallah from the surrounding villages.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
A Child in War: Detaining Omar Khadr Violates Our Moral and Legal Principles
Legal Times
April 2, 2007
When my co-counsel and I first visited Omar Khadr, our client in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he was a gangly, somewhat awkward and shy, but friendly 18-year-old whose voice was changing. His wisdom teeth hadn’t come in yet, and his beard was scraggly and thin.
That was in November 2004, a few months after the Supreme Court had ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that detainees at Guantánamo had a right to have access to lawyers and to the U.S. courts.
Omar and his family, all Canadian citizens, lived in Kabul at the time the United States took military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan in October 2001. He was separated from his parents and siblings as they tried to make their way to Pakistan, and he was taken into U.S. custody in July 2002. He was severely wounded in a confrontation with U.S. and U.S.-supported troops during which a U.S. soldier died.
He was 15 years old when captured, a child by any measure. He spent the first several months of his detention at the U.S. air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, where he was aggressively interrogated, including questioning on a hospital stretcher and without the benefits of pain medication. Then he was sent to Guantánamo in October. Brutal and virtually continuous physical and psychological interrogation continued after his transfer and throughout most of 2003.
Omar passed his 16th, 17th, and 18th birthdays in virtual isolation, cut off from all but the most rudimentary communication with his family or anyone else in the outside world until our first visit with him. In addition to the most basic protections of children against improper assaults, he was denied the medical attention and other health care, diet, education, and recreation that all children deserve and are entitled to as a matter of fundamental human rights.
Omar is 20 years old now, having lost nearly a quarter of his life in custody. He was recently charged with “murder in violation of the law of war,” a charge related to the death of the U.S. soldier, and four other alleged war crimes. He faces trial at Guantánamo by a reconstituted but still-broken military commission. His will be the first trial by U.S. military commission for alleged war crimes committed as a child since at least World War II.
Omar’s home country, Canada, has been conspicuously silent on the return of its child citizen. History, law, and morality all dictate that his trial by the U.S. military for crimes allegedly committed as a child should not proceed.
Under the international law of war, children in armed conflict are “protected persons” entitled to special respect, whether as civilians, prisoners, or criminal defendants. Regardless of alleged wrongdoing, a child found on the battlefield must be treated with special care based on age alone.
As early as 1924, the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child. In 1954, the United Nations followed suit, recognizing that a child, “by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection.” In 1974, the United Nations adopted a declaration on the protection of children in armed conflict, calling on governments “involved in military operations in foreign territory . . . to spare women and children from the ravages of war.” Children, the declaration recognized, were and are “the most vulnerable members of the population” during wartime, especially when separated from their families.
New global standards on juvenile justice — the Beijing Rules in 1985 and the Riyadh Guidelines in 1990 — were designed to assure for children all across the world “a meaningful life in the community, which . . . will foster a process of personal development and education,” as the Beijing Rules declare. Thus, these are not just American but global principles.
Except for Omar’s case, U.S. policy and practice has been to give special protection to children in war. In 1998, Congress adopted a resolution calling for the release, rehabilitation, and reintegration into society of children taken into custody on the battlefield.
In 2002, the United States ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, calling for similar treatment. Canada and the United States played leading roles in the drafting and adoption of that treaty. In answer to a question from Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) at Senate hearings, the State Department representative answered that “the United States actively supports activities to assist children affected by war, including demobilization, rehabilitation, and integration into civilian society.” A Defense Department witness, in the same hearings, noted that the treaty “offers important foreign-policy benefits.”
Marines have begun to receive training under the treaty, which calls on our soldiers to “avoid and limit” casualties among children in armed conflict; to fire for shock effect only; to use nonlethal weapons where possible; and to “welcome” child soldiers who escape or desert from opposing forces.
And in the past few years alone, the United States and Canada have spent millions of dollars on the rehabilitation of child soldiers in Afghanistan, all while Omar languishes in Cuba, waiting in total isolation for a trial that has yet to occur.
These funds in Afghanistan go to infrastructure projects such as school construction, but the most important focus of programs such as the New Beginnings Program is on “DD&R” — disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Demobilization includes the downsizing or disbanding of armed forces, both formal and informal, through release or discharge. Reintegration, which is recognized as the most crucial but most complex of the steps in the process, involves assistance to bring about the economic and social re-entry of children and their families into civil society.
The United States has certainly disarmed Omar. But where is his demobilization and reintegration?
NO PRECEDENT
No child of Omar’s age at the time of his alleged misconduct has ever been charged with war crimes before any international war crimes tribunal. The statute of the new International Criminal Court bars the prosecution of children under 18, and the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have not prosecuted a single child under 18, though they have the power to do so.
Similarly, the prosecutor in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where child soldiers have committed horrendous atrocities, has declined to prosecute children under 18 despite the statutory authority to do so. The reason was that trying children would not meet the court’s requirement to prosecute “those who bear the greatest responsibility.”
And in January 2006, a major report on military courts flatly recommended that “in no case” should a child under 18 ever “be placed under the jurisdiction of military courts” anywhere in the world.
Not all children at Guantánamo have been treated like Omar. In April 2003, after sharp inquiries from the press and public, the Pentagon revealed that there were several children in detention at Camp Delta.
Subsequent investigation revealed three Afghan children there who had been captured at ages 10, 12, and 13. Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a press conference at the time that “despite their age, these are very, very dangerous people. . . [T]hey may be juveniles, but they’re not on a Little League team anywhere, they’re on a Major League team, and it’s a terrorist team.” These younger children at Guantánamo, however, were separated from the adult detainees and put into a separate facility — Camp Iguana — where they received education and comfortable treatment before their nearly immediate transfer back to Afghanistan and their families.
Not so with Omar Khadr. Age 16 at the time of his arrival in Cuba, he was arbitrarily classified as an adult and designated as an “enemy combatant” in a hearing without a lawyer that he declined to attend. The government argues that there is no lower age limit to the enemy-combatant designation, and thus no minimum age limit on commission jurisdiction to try Omar as an adult.
In fact, there is no affirmative provision of U.S. law, now or ever, whether in the statutory scheme for military commissions or for courts-martial, that sets an age limit that permits a 16-year-old detainee to be kept as an adult and tried for war crimes committed at age 15, while 10-, 12-, and 13-year-old detainees are sent home as juveniles. This despite passage of recent congressional enactments dealing with Guantánamo detainees such as the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, either of which could have specifically granted such authorization if Congress wished.
JUVENILE JUSTICE
Were he to be tried in the federal juvenile justice system, Omar, as a child under 18 years of age at the time of his alleged wrongs, would at least be entitled to a hearing, with counsel and possibly a guardian ad litem, before possible transfer into adult jurisdiction for criminal trial as an adult. His own best interests as a child would be paramount in the decision to transfer, and he would be entitled to constitutional due process of law in any such determination.
Forty years ago this year, the Supreme Court said, in its landmark In re Gault decision on juvenile rights in the criminal process, “under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court.” The Gault Court recognized that a child certainly should not face criminal charges with less protections than an adult, given our concerns with the best interests of children.
Yet Omar faces that very prospect today, with trial by a military commission whose legitimacy is seriously questioned by many within Congress, the legal academy, and the military itself.
Remarkably, newly adopted rules for the reconstituted military commission process do contain provisions that make appropriate concessions for youth.
All, however, relate to children participating as witnesses or victims in the process. The rules recognize that a child — defined as anyone under the age of 16 — is entitled to special treatment before these military tribunals. The rules explicitly recognize that children are different than adults because they are more impressionable. Children, the commentary to the rules states, are particularly susceptible to fear, pressure, or intimidation.
The Supreme Court has recognized these developmental issues in its acknowledgement of new advances in the study of cognitive brain function in adolescents. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the justices struck down the death penalty for minors under 18 at the time of their offenses. The Court found that these children “have diminished capacities to understand and process mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand the reactions of others.”
Surely this is no less true for a child defendant in a military commission trial, but neither the Military Commissions Act nor the new rules make any concession for the youth of the accused, whether in trial or in sentencing.
The impending trial of Omar Khadr by U.S. military commission is unprecedented and wrong — historically, legally, and morally. In January, the United Nations adopted Resolution 61/146, which calls on all countries to implement measures for children involved in armed conflict. These measures are not for trial, but for “rehabilitation, physical, and psychological recovery and reintegration into society.”
Canada must call for the return of its son and citizen to his home and family. And the United States must set an example for the world. Rather than a vindictive and vengeful trial of a child for alleged war crimes, it should send Omar home.
Rick Wilson is a law professor and director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at American University in Washington, D.C.
April 2, 2007
When my co-counsel and I first visited Omar Khadr, our client in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, he was a gangly, somewhat awkward and shy, but friendly 18-year-old whose voice was changing. His wisdom teeth hadn’t come in yet, and his beard was scraggly and thin.
That was in November 2004, a few months after the Supreme Court had ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that detainees at Guantánamo had a right to have access to lawyers and to the U.S. courts.
Omar and his family, all Canadian citizens, lived in Kabul at the time the United States took military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan in October 2001. He was separated from his parents and siblings as they tried to make their way to Pakistan, and he was taken into U.S. custody in July 2002. He was severely wounded in a confrontation with U.S. and U.S.-supported troops during which a U.S. soldier died.
He was 15 years old when captured, a child by any measure. He spent the first several months of his detention at the U.S. air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, where he was aggressively interrogated, including questioning on a hospital stretcher and without the benefits of pain medication. Then he was sent to Guantánamo in October. Brutal and virtually continuous physical and psychological interrogation continued after his transfer and throughout most of 2003.
Omar passed his 16th, 17th, and 18th birthdays in virtual isolation, cut off from all but the most rudimentary communication with his family or anyone else in the outside world until our first visit with him. In addition to the most basic protections of children against improper assaults, he was denied the medical attention and other health care, diet, education, and recreation that all children deserve and are entitled to as a matter of fundamental human rights.
Omar is 20 years old now, having lost nearly a quarter of his life in custody. He was recently charged with “murder in violation of the law of war,” a charge related to the death of the U.S. soldier, and four other alleged war crimes. He faces trial at Guantánamo by a reconstituted but still-broken military commission. His will be the first trial by U.S. military commission for alleged war crimes committed as a child since at least World War II.
Omar’s home country, Canada, has been conspicuously silent on the return of its child citizen. History, law, and morality all dictate that his trial by the U.S. military for crimes allegedly committed as a child should not proceed.
Under the international law of war, children in armed conflict are “protected persons” entitled to special respect, whether as civilians, prisoners, or criminal defendants. Regardless of alleged wrongdoing, a child found on the battlefield must be treated with special care based on age alone.
As early as 1924, the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child. In 1954, the United Nations followed suit, recognizing that a child, “by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection.” In 1974, the United Nations adopted a declaration on the protection of children in armed conflict, calling on governments “involved in military operations in foreign territory . . . to spare women and children from the ravages of war.” Children, the declaration recognized, were and are “the most vulnerable members of the population” during wartime, especially when separated from their families.
New global standards on juvenile justice — the Beijing Rules in 1985 and the Riyadh Guidelines in 1990 — were designed to assure for children all across the world “a meaningful life in the community, which . . . will foster a process of personal development and education,” as the Beijing Rules declare. Thus, these are not just American but global principles.
Except for Omar’s case, U.S. policy and practice has been to give special protection to children in war. In 1998, Congress adopted a resolution calling for the release, rehabilitation, and reintegration into society of children taken into custody on the battlefield.
In 2002, the United States ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, calling for similar treatment. Canada and the United States played leading roles in the drafting and adoption of that treaty. In answer to a question from Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) at Senate hearings, the State Department representative answered that “the United States actively supports activities to assist children affected by war, including demobilization, rehabilitation, and integration into civilian society.” A Defense Department witness, in the same hearings, noted that the treaty “offers important foreign-policy benefits.”
Marines have begun to receive training under the treaty, which calls on our soldiers to “avoid and limit” casualties among children in armed conflict; to fire for shock effect only; to use nonlethal weapons where possible; and to “welcome” child soldiers who escape or desert from opposing forces.
And in the past few years alone, the United States and Canada have spent millions of dollars on the rehabilitation of child soldiers in Afghanistan, all while Omar languishes in Cuba, waiting in total isolation for a trial that has yet to occur.
These funds in Afghanistan go to infrastructure projects such as school construction, but the most important focus of programs such as the New Beginnings Program is on “DD&R” — disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. Demobilization includes the downsizing or disbanding of armed forces, both formal and informal, through release or discharge. Reintegration, which is recognized as the most crucial but most complex of the steps in the process, involves assistance to bring about the economic and social re-entry of children and their families into civil society.
The United States has certainly disarmed Omar. But where is his demobilization and reintegration?
NO PRECEDENT
No child of Omar’s age at the time of his alleged misconduct has ever been charged with war crimes before any international war crimes tribunal. The statute of the new International Criminal Court bars the prosecution of children under 18, and the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have not prosecuted a single child under 18, though they have the power to do so.
Similarly, the prosecutor in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, where child soldiers have committed horrendous atrocities, has declined to prosecute children under 18 despite the statutory authority to do so. The reason was that trying children would not meet the court’s requirement to prosecute “those who bear the greatest responsibility.”
And in January 2006, a major report on military courts flatly recommended that “in no case” should a child under 18 ever “be placed under the jurisdiction of military courts” anywhere in the world.
Not all children at Guantánamo have been treated like Omar. In April 2003, after sharp inquiries from the press and public, the Pentagon revealed that there were several children in detention at Camp Delta.
Subsequent investigation revealed three Afghan children there who had been captured at ages 10, 12, and 13. Gen. Richard Myers, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a press conference at the time that “despite their age, these are very, very dangerous people. . . [T]hey may be juveniles, but they’re not on a Little League team anywhere, they’re on a Major League team, and it’s a terrorist team.” These younger children at Guantánamo, however, were separated from the adult detainees and put into a separate facility — Camp Iguana — where they received education and comfortable treatment before their nearly immediate transfer back to Afghanistan and their families.
Not so with Omar Khadr. Age 16 at the time of his arrival in Cuba, he was arbitrarily classified as an adult and designated as an “enemy combatant” in a hearing without a lawyer that he declined to attend. The government argues that there is no lower age limit to the enemy-combatant designation, and thus no minimum age limit on commission jurisdiction to try Omar as an adult.
In fact, there is no affirmative provision of U.S. law, now or ever, whether in the statutory scheme for military commissions or for courts-martial, that sets an age limit that permits a 16-year-old detainee to be kept as an adult and tried for war crimes committed at age 15, while 10-, 12-, and 13-year-old detainees are sent home as juveniles. This despite passage of recent congressional enactments dealing with Guantánamo detainees such as the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, either of which could have specifically granted such authorization if Congress wished.
JUVENILE JUSTICE
Were he to be tried in the federal juvenile justice system, Omar, as a child under 18 years of age at the time of his alleged wrongs, would at least be entitled to a hearing, with counsel and possibly a guardian ad litem, before possible transfer into adult jurisdiction for criminal trial as an adult. His own best interests as a child would be paramount in the decision to transfer, and he would be entitled to constitutional due process of law in any such determination.
Forty years ago this year, the Supreme Court said, in its landmark In re Gault decision on juvenile rights in the criminal process, “under our Constitution, the condition of being a boy does not justify a kangaroo court.” The Gault Court recognized that a child certainly should not face criminal charges with less protections than an adult, given our concerns with the best interests of children.
Yet Omar faces that very prospect today, with trial by a military commission whose legitimacy is seriously questioned by many within Congress, the legal academy, and the military itself.
Remarkably, newly adopted rules for the reconstituted military commission process do contain provisions that make appropriate concessions for youth.
All, however, relate to children participating as witnesses or victims in the process. The rules recognize that a child — defined as anyone under the age of 16 — is entitled to special treatment before these military tribunals. The rules explicitly recognize that children are different than adults because they are more impressionable. Children, the commentary to the rules states, are particularly susceptible to fear, pressure, or intimidation.
The Supreme Court has recognized these developmental issues in its acknowledgement of new advances in the study of cognitive brain function in adolescents. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the justices struck down the death penalty for minors under 18 at the time of their offenses. The Court found that these children “have diminished capacities to understand and process mistakes and learn from experience, to engage in logical reasoning, to control impulses, and to understand the reactions of others.”
Surely this is no less true for a child defendant in a military commission trial, but neither the Military Commissions Act nor the new rules make any concession for the youth of the accused, whether in trial or in sentencing.
The impending trial of Omar Khadr by U.S. military commission is unprecedented and wrong — historically, legally, and morally. In January, the United Nations adopted Resolution 61/146, which calls on all countries to implement measures for children involved in armed conflict. These measures are not for trial, but for “rehabilitation, physical, and psychological recovery and reintegration into society.”
Canada must call for the return of its son and citizen to his home and family. And the United States must set an example for the world. Rather than a vindictive and vengeful trial of a child for alleged war crimes, it should send Omar home.
Rick Wilson is a law professor and director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at American University in Washington, D.C.
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