op 18 front pages-converted - The Watson Institute for International ...

In a letter sent in June 1993 to their respective Geneva
headquarters, the senior officials in Belgrade of WHO, UNHCR,
and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) noted their “ethical obligation” to call
attention to “the detrimental effect of the sanctions on the
health of the people and on the health care system of the
country where we work.” They explained that “While the
sanctions, in principle, do not cover medical supplies, in
practice they have contributed to breaking the health care
system....[A]ll health care institutions in all parts of the country
lack vital drugs, equipment and spare parts.”
In addition to its time-consuming, case-by-case review of
requests for commercial drug imports, the Sanctions Committee
refused to authorize imports of raw materials from which
a relatively advanced Serbian pharmaceutical industry could
manufacture drugs itself. Efforts by Serb health authorities to
arrange visits by outside technicians to repair blood testing
and transfusion equipment were unsuccessful, apparently
reflecting the perception abroad that travel to Belgrade would
undercut the embargo. Serb authorities then shipped the
equipment to Britain for repair; it was not returned, apparently
also for fear of violating the embargo. WHO reported
that as of June 1993, “4,000 hemodialysis patients live in a
continuous uncertainty.” By September, the Belgrade authorities
had raised the number to 5,000.
Third, assistance activities became much harder to administer.
The growing desperation of people ineligible for aid led
to a higher rate of tampering with beneficiary lists. Some aid
officials expressed the view that the growing unpopularity of
U.N. sanctions made efforts to subvert the aid program an act
of defiance. Some relief personnel saw a connection between
the embargo, humanitarian aid, and increased criminal activity.
Belgrade authorities linked the sanctions to “corruption,
smuggling, violence,” and other major “changes of ethical and
moral values.”
If the direct impacts of sanctions were wide-ranging, the
indirect repercussions were no less dramatic. First, sanctions
widened an implicit contradiction within humanitarian programs.
From the start, the U.N.’s focus had been on refugees,
more than half a million of whom fled from Bosnia and
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