Iraq's Suffering Children | ARTE.tv Documentary

Infant mortality rates in Southern Iraq are so high that Basra has had to create three children’s cemeteries. Many point the finger at pollution caused by the oil industry.

Children pay the heaviest price. The mortality rate is so high that there are three child cemeteries. Between 1994 and 2003, the number of malformations increased 17-fold, i.e. 14 times more than in Nagasaki or Hiroshima.

In Nehran Omar, a town of 2,000 inhabitants located 30 km from Basra, the inhabitants are distressed by the incredible number of handicapped children and cancer deaths.
The use of weapons containing depleted uranium has exposed the local population to radioactive dust which has contaminated the soil, waterways and livestock.

After the bombings, the radiotoxic fumes, the open sewers, the drought, the global warming, the inhabitants also suffer from the harmful emissions of carbon dioxide and benzene generated by the combustion of methane from the hydrocarbon industry. The laws that are supposed to protect the population from the effects of pollution exist, but they are not applied: the oil windfall represents almost 90% of the Iraqi budget.

Iraq's Suffering Children | ARTE.tv Documentary
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