Many are malnourished, 22.1% of children suffering from moderate to severe stunting or chronic malnutrition and a quarter of babies being born at low birth weight, indicating maternal malnutrition and some 70% of women are anaemic. UNICEF is supporting the country's primary health care clinics in conducting door-to-door vaccinations, first polio and then measles, beginning with children under 6 and then covering the 6-12 age group. Therapeutic feeding is intended to 'beef up' the kids in preparation for war, but the fact remains that children are much weaker than in 1991, when their parents were, for the most part, in good jobs and they were healthy and well fed. UNICEF's national staff have been trained up to run the programme themselves, so that when international staff are ordered out, the programme will continue.
Asked whether he had any message for Tony Blair and George Bush, Mr de Rooy said that he did not concern himself with politics but with the children of Iraq. He pointed out that the effects which he talked about were already well-documented.
According to the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war, effects cease to be collateral and become intentional when they are inevitable and foreknown. It is prohibited to attack or destroy objects indispensable to the civilian population, and the presence of military objectives within a population does not deprive it of its civilian character. There is already a 2300 Megawatt per day deficit in Iraq's electricity supply. Any attack on any power station will be a grave breach of international and British law. Any attack on a telecommunications tower next to a block of flats will be a grave breach.
And Tony, we're here, and we're watching you.
Jo Wilding
For more eyewitness accounts of Iraq, today - including earlier pieces from Jo Wilding’s Diary - please visit:
http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire/iraq/index.htm
Wildfire: Jo Wildings website:
http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire
Asked whether he had any message for Tony Blair and George Bush, Mr de Rooy said that he did not concern himself with politics but with the children of Iraq. He pointed out that the effects which he talked about were already well-documented.
According to the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war, effects cease to be collateral and become intentional when they are inevitable and foreknown. It is prohibited to attack or destroy objects indispensable to the civilian population, and the presence of military objectives within a population does not deprive it of its civilian character. There is already a 2300 Megawatt per day deficit in Iraq's electricity supply. Any attack on any power station will be a grave breach of international and British law. Any attack on a telecommunications tower next to a block of flats will be a grave breach.
And Tony, we're here, and we're watching you.
Jo Wilding
For more eyewitness accounts of Iraq, today - including earlier pieces from Jo Wilding’s Diary - please visit:
http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire/iraq/index.htm
Wildfire: Jo Wildings website:
http://www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire