While sanctions are commonly understood as non-military alternatives to open warfare, their impacts on sanctioned nations, especially when imposed by powerful actors like the United States, and enabled through the hegemony of the dollar, cause widespread humanitarian distress. They wreak havoc on civilian life, constrain access to essential food and medicines, generate poverty and disease, and are incompatible with the principles of sovereignty, equality, and human rights. In this light, unilateral sanctions, imposed outside the framework of the United Nations or other multilateral institutions, have become pervasive instruments of economic coercion, constraining the economic policy space of targeted states, and strangling health systems and provision of public goods, as a means of gaining political leverage. Recent evidence demonstrates that sanctions caused a 1.4 year decrease in women’s life expectancy, increased rates of HIV infections among children, and caused tens of thousands of deaths in Venezuela in 2017-18 alone. 30 out of 32 econometric academic studies showed negative impacts on income, poverty, and human rights as a consequence of broad sanctions.
