Broad economic sanctions, most of which are imposed by the U.S. government, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people each year \u2014 disproportionately children. This week the Lancet Global Health journal published an article that estimated that number at about 564,000 annually over a decade. This is comparable to the annual deaths around the world from armed conflict.<\/p>\n
Sanctions are becoming the preferred weapon of the United States and some allies \u2014 not because they are less destructive than military action, but more likely because the toll is less visible. They can devastate food systems and hospitals and silently kill people without the gruesome videos of body parts in tent camps and cafes bombed from the air. They offer policymakers something that can deliver the deadly impact of war, even against civilians, without the political cost.<\/p>\n
The above estimate of 564,000 annual deaths from sanctions is based on an analysis of data from 152 countries over 10 years. The study was by economists Francisco Rodr\u00edguez, Silvio Rend\u00f3n and myself.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a horrifying finding, but not surprising to economists, statisticians and other researchers who have investigated these impacts of economic sanctions. These are measures that target the entire economy, or a part of it that most of the rest of the economy depends on, such as the financial sector or a predominant export, for example in oil-exporting economies.<\/p>\n
The sanctions can block access to essential imports such as medicine and food and the necessary infrastructure and spare parts to maintain drinkable water, including electrical systems.<\/p>\n
Damage to the economy can sometimes be even more deadly than just the blocking of critical, life-sustaining imports. Venezuela is an example of a country that suffered all of these impacts, and the case is far more well-documented than for most of the now 25% of countries under sanctions (up from 8% in the 1960s). In Venezuela, the first year of sanctions under the first Trump administration took tens of thousands of lives. Then things got even worse<\/a>, as the U.S. cut off<\/a> the country from the international financial system and oil exports, froze billions of dollars of assets and imposed \u201csecondary sanctions\u201d on countries that tried to do business with Venezuela.<\/p>\n Venezuela experienced the worst depression, without a war, in world history. This was from 2012 to 2020, with the economy contracting by 71% \u2014 more than three times the severity of the Great Depression in the U.S. in the 1930s. Most of this was found to be the result of the sanctions.<\/p>\n Our study found that a majority of people who died as a result of sanctions in all countries were children under 5. This atrocity is consistent with prior research. Medical studies have found that children in this age group become much more susceptible<\/a> to death from childhood diseases such as diarrhea, pneumonia and measles when they become malnourished.<\/p>\n These results are also consistent with statistical studies by the Bank of International Settlements and other statisticians and economists who find that recessions in developing countries substantially increase<\/a> death rates. Of course, the destruction caused by sanctions, as above, can be many times worse than the average recession.<\/p>\n In 2021, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) wrote a letter<\/a> to then-President Biden, asking him to \u201clift all secondary and sectoral sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the Trump Administration.\u201d The impact of these sanctions, he said, \u201cis indiscriminate, and purposely so. \u2026 Economic pain is the means by which the sanctions are supposed to work. But it is not Venezuelan officials who suffer the costs. It is the Venezuelan people.\u201d<\/p>\n This is why U.S. sanctions are illegal under treaties the United States has signed, including the Charter of the Organization of American States<\/a>. They are also prohibited during wartime<\/a> under the Geneva<\/a> and Hague<\/a> conventions, as collective punishment of civilians. U.N. experts have argued<\/a>, quite persuasively, that something that is a war crime when people are bombing and shooting each other should also be a crime when there is no such war.<\/p>\n These sanctions also violate U.S. law. In ordering the sanctions, the president is required by U.S. law to declare that the sanctioned country is causing a \u201cnational emergency<\/a>\u201d for the United States and poses \u201can unusual and extraordinary threat\u201d to U.S. national security. But this has almost never been true.<\/p>\n Given the deterioration of the rule of law in the United States, and the lack of regard for human rights in America\u2019s foreign policy \u2014 and increasingly at home \u2014 it\u2019s easy to be pessimistic about the prospects for ending this economic violence. But it will end.<\/p>\n We have seen victories against much more formidable adversaries and entrenched policies, including wars \u2014 most recently against the U.S. participation in the war in Yemen. Organized opposition got Congress to pass<\/a> a related war powers resolution in 2019. This forced an end<\/a> to at least some of the U.S. military support and blockade that had put millions of people at emergency<\/a> levels of hunger, thereby saving thousands of lives.<\/p>\n The CIA\u2019s formal post-9\/11 torture program, which included waterboarding, was ended by executive order<\/a> in 2009, after public exposure and considerable opposition.<\/p>\n The biggest advantage of sanctions, for the policymakers who use them, is the invisibility of their toll. But that is also their Achilles\u2019 heel. When the economic violence of broad sanctions becomes widely known, they will be indefensible and no longer politically sustainable.<\/p>\n Mark Weisbrot<\/a> is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is the author of \u201cFailed: What the \u2018Experts\u2019 Got Wrong About the Global Economy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Broad economic sanctions, most of which are imposed by the U.S. government, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[108039,16314,4094,108038,108037,1429,8639,108036,5882,91229,10734,49,978,659,8518,771,3118],"class_list":{"0":"post-289976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-annual-death","9":"tag-child","10":"tag-country","11":"tag-deadly-impact","12":"tag-innocent-people","13":"tag-life","14":"tag-result","15":"tag-sanction","16":"tag-study","17":"tag-thousand","18":"tag-u-s-government","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa","22":"tag-venezuela","23":"tag-war","24":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114912657755954944","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}