Well isn’t this just a lovely piece of misinformation, courtesy of the BBC:

The no-fly zones – which have never been sanctioned by the United Nations – were imposed by the US, Britain and France, in what was described as a humanitarian effort to protect Shia Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north.

Is that so? Perhaps, but if memory serves me right, the UN was responsible for demanding the protection of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites from reprisals from Saddam Hussein, and the Coalition (meaning the US, UK, and at the time France) imposed the no-fly zones in order to enforce the UN mandate. Secifically, the no-fly zones were an extrapolation of UN Resolution 688:

4. Requests the Secretary-General to pursue his humanitarian efforts in Iraq and to report forthwith, if appropriate on the basis of a further mission to the region, on the plight of the Iraqi civilian population, and in particular the Kurdish population, suffering from the repression in all its forms inflicted by the Iraqi authorities;

The real question is whether or not the resolution would have been enforced without the no-fly zones. What’s more remarkable is that France participated in instituting the no-fly zones, then retracted. Regrettable for the French to do so, if not typical.