Kuwait receives $270 million in war reparations

GENEVA — Kuwait has received another $270 million in compensation for Iraq's 1990 invasion, the UN said on Tuesday, as it aims to wrap up reparations more than a decade after Saddam Hussein's death. 

The United Nations Compensation Commission was set up in 1991, the same year that a US-led coalition drove former Iraqi dictator Hussein's forces out of Kuwait.

The commission has been authorised to pay out $52.4 billion (46.8 billion euros) to individuals, corporations, government bodies and other organisations that incurred losses directly caused by the Iraqi leader's incursion and occupation of Kuwait. 

The funds come from a levy on the sale of Iraqi oil and petroleum products.

The commission was forced to halt payments between 2014 and 2018, due to a security crisis in Iraq, notably the takeover of large parts of the country by the Daesh group. 

With the latest payment, the commission said it had paid out a total of $48.7 billion, leaving $3.7 billion left to be distributed. 

Those funds are tied to a single claim submitted by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation losses in oil production and damage to oil field assets, the commission said in a statement. 

Until it requested a pause in 2014, Iraq adhered to the levy, although some have questioned whether the scheme remains fair to a still-struggling nation. Hussein was ousted by another US invasion in 2003 and executed in 2006.