Abstract
This chapter examines the politics of the sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations four days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990. The UN Security Council's decision to impose sanctions for Iraq's aggression against Kuwait was justified. However, these should have been accompanied by a carefully crafted humanitarian exemption to ensure that the civilian population would receive what they needed for a dignified survival, especially food, medicines, clean water, and electricity. The UN's failure to do so eventually led to the successive resignations of Denis Halliday and the this chapter's author as Baghdad-based UN assistant secretaries-general and humanitarian coordinators. The chapter recounts how the UN sanctions on Iraq during the period 1990–2003 were implemented in “an iron-fist and an inhuman” way at the expense of the Iraqi civilians. It also considers how the humanitarian exception to these sanctions—via the Oil-for-Food program—was overshadowed by powerful Western interests for regime change in Iraq. The chapter suggests that the UN was caught between geopolitical considerations and its humanitarian mission.