Between 2010 and 2021, unilateral sanctions caused ~564,258 deaths each year – more than five times the number of people killed annually in direct armed combat. This warning comes from a new report published in The Lancet, which contextualizes decades of data on how sanctions affect mortality.
“From a rights-based perspective, evidence that sanctions lead to losses in lives should be sufficient reason to advocate for the suspension of their use,” the study’s authors argue. But that is far from reality. Over the same decade, nearly a quarter of all of the world’s countries were affected by sanctions, driven primarily by a sharp increase in unilateral economic measures imposed by the United States and its European allies.
While Western sanctions “have the claimed aim to end wars, protect human rights, or promote democracy,” the report shows they do the very opposite. By restricting a country’s ability to import essential goods like food, medicine, and medical supplies, and by slashing public budgets, sanctions systematically undermine healthcare systems and other vital services.
This isn’t discussed enough, likely because it doesn’t have the shock and awe that war does, similar to how the relatively small amount of violent crime hits the news while all the vehicular deaths are mostly glossed over. They rarely actually have any effect on the rulers, yet they devastate the populace. Proponents say dumb shit like, “It will cause the people to rebel!” No, it won’t. When you and your children are sick and literally starving, it is difficult to organize resistance, not only physically but also mentally as your cognitive functions suffer as well. That’s also assuming that there is actually a fundamental issue with the government. Many times, sanctions are a cudgel used by western bullies against countries that won’t play ball with extractive economics or other harmful policies. Sometimes, the pain caused to the population is the point because they had the gall to elect leaders the bullies don’t like.