In Iraq, Childhood Lost

The tragedy war has reached Iraq’s youngest. Here’s what you need to know:

• Iraq has the highest mortality rate for children under 5, according to relief organization Save The Children.
• One in eight Iraqi children will die before their fifth birthday. In 2005 alone the number of children who died was 122,000.
• This mortality rate has skyrocketed 150 percent since the first Gulf War.
• In the 12 years before the 2003 invasion, under a harsh regime of sanctions, "the United Nations estimated that half a million Iraqi children died," mostly from malnutrition and disease.
• Since the 2003 invasion, cases of malnutrition have leapt 9 percent.
• The kids that haven’t fled with their families rarely attend school: 760,000 children, over 17 percent of Iraqi children, were out of primary school in 2006. [IPS]

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