17 |
Civilian casualties
The FCO’s
reply, which had been agreed with DFID, stated that there were no
truly
reliable
figures for child mortality in Iraq.13
The only
figures available were from a 1999
UNICEF
report which claimed that child mortality had risen from 56 per
1,000 in 1989 to
131 per
1,000 in 1999 in “Baghdad‑controlled Iraq” and fallen from 80 per
1,000 to 72 per
1,000 over
the same period in “UN‑controlled” northern Iraq. However, those
figures had
been
questioned. The household surveys on which the figures were based
had been
“conducted
with the Iraqi regime’s ‘help’ and relied on some Iraqi
figures”.
A No.10
official passed the figures for Baghdad‑controlled Iraq (but not
northern Iraq) to
Mr Blair.14
The
official did not make any reference to the reliability of those
figures.
The Inquiry
concludes that the figures provided to Mr Blair in February
2003 by Ms Short
and FCO
officials were drawn from UNICEF’s Iraq Child and Maternal
Mortality Survey
(ICMMS),
published in August 1999.15
That survey
received extensive coverage in the
media, in
particular on whether there was a connection between the apparent
rise in child
mortality
and the sanctions regime that was then in force.16
The level
of child mortality in Iraq estimated by the ICMMS was significantly
higher than
that
estimated by later surveys. The Child Mortality Estimates website,
which presents the
work of the
UN Inter‑Agency Group on Child Mortality Estimation, charts the
estimates of
major
surveys of under‑five mortality in Iraq.17
The UN
Inter‑Agency Group on Child Mortality Estimation estimates that the
under‑five
mortality
rate in Iraq was 55 per 1,000 in 1989, 46 per 1,000 in 1999, 42 per
1,000 in
2003, and
37 per 1,000 in 2010 (when Mr Blair gave his evidence to the
Inquiry).18
In
September 2010, Professor Michael Spagat reported that the child
mortality estimates
reported by
the ICMMS were between two and three times higher than those
reported
by three
other major UN‑sponsored surveys (the Iraq Living Conditions Survey
2005, the
Multiple
Indictor Cluster Survey in Iraq 2007 and the Iraq Family Health
Survey 2008).19
He
suggested that the high and rising child mortality rates reported
by the ICMMS could
be
explained by:
•
the
manipulation of the sanctions regime by Saddam Hussein, in order
to
exacerbate
the suffering caused by that regime for political purposes;
and
•
the
manipulation of data by Saddam Hussein’s regime, to exaggerate
the
suffering
caused by sanctions.
13
Fax Owen to
Rycroft, 14 February 2003, ‘PM’s Speech Question’.
14
Minute
Rycroft to Prime Minister, 14 February 2003, ‘Iraq: Scotland Speech
– Additional Points’.
15
UNICEF, 12
August 1999, Iraq Child
and Maternal Mortality Survey.
16
BBC,
12 August
1999, Iraqi child
death rates soar.
17
Child
Mortality Estimates website, Under‑five
mortality rate: Iraq. Child
Mortality Estimates (CME) Info
is a
database containing the latest child mortality estimates based on
the research of the UN Inter‑agency
Group for
Child Mortality Estimation. The UN Inter‑agency Group comprises
UNICEF, WHO, the World
Bank, and
the UN DESA Population Division.
18
Child
Mortality Estimates website, Under‑five
mortality rate: Iraq.
19
Spagat M.
Truth and death in Iraq under sanctions. Significance
7(3):
116‑120 (2010).
175