The United States’ addiction to sanctions: A crime against humanity

Since the beginning of the 21st century, sanctions have played a prominent, though deeply unpopular, role in global politics. In the absence of public support for military interventions and wars, Western policymakers have increasingly relied on sanctions.

By 2024, around 30% of the world’s nations, with a combined population of nearly 200 million, had been subjected to sanctions imposed by the US, the EU, or the UN. Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, criticized this trend, urging countries to suspend or lift unilateral coercive measures that negatively affect human rights and worsen humanitarian needs. He stressed that sanctions must fully comply with international law and should be regularly reviewed for their impact on human rights.

Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, based on her visits, thematic research, and testimonies from multiple sources, confirmed that unilateral sanctions and their overcompliance harm the people of targeted nations.

Unilateral sanctions violate two aspects of the UN Charter. Article 1(3) identifies international cooperation in addressing economic and humanitarian challenges as a core UN principle. Unilateral measures are acceptable only when aligned with universally accepted conditions; otherwise, they threaten the entire international system established after WWII and the UN Charter’s cooperative foundations.

The US’s addiction to unilateral sanctions, especially economic ones, has become increasingly evident over past decades. One of the gravest consequences of this pathological reliance is the violation of human rights in sanctioned countries and regions.

Sanctions as a tool of US foreign policy

In recent decades, economic sanctions have become one of the most favored instruments of successive US administrations, applied under various pretexts against countries worldwide.

The Bush and Obama administrations used sanctions to confront a host of national security and foreign policy challenges, while Donald Trump expanded their use even further, making sanctions a cornerstone of his responses to perceived threats.

Economic sanctions typically involve asset freezes, trade restrictions, denial of access to financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, and travel bans. These measures are largely imposed by Western powers against developing and postcolonial nations.

Academic perspectives on sanctions

In theory, sanctions aim to achieve geopolitical goals. But research shows they fail to deliver—even by the standards of policymakers. Decades of studies indicate that sanctions not only fail to advance stated or hidden political objectives but often backfire.

While sanctions are marketed to the American public as essential geopolitical tools, they primarily serve domestic political purposes. Understanding Washington’s overreliance on sanctions requires examining domestic political constraints and priorities rather than assuming they are designed for genuine foreign policy success.

Sanctions under the pretext of human rights

US administrations often claim unilateral sanctions promote human rights in target countries—a claim without foundation. In reality, such sanctions, imposed under the guise of human rights, have devastated the very rights they claim to protect. In Latin America, for example, sanctions have produced catastrophic consequences.

Why are US sanctions illegal?

There are fundamental differences between multilateral and unilateral sanctions. Unilateral sanctions, broadly considered illegal, now account for over 80% of global sanctions—most imposed by the US. Between 2001 and 2021, they increased by nearly 933%.

These sanctions, currently affecting one-third of the world’s population across 30 countries, rest on complex networks of illegality targeting individuals, organizations, and economies. Experts argue that they violate international agreements, including the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, WTO commitments, GATT provisions, and the Hague and Geneva Conventions. They also breach human rights frameworks such as the 1993 Vienna Declaration and multiple UN Human Rights Council resolutions.

Some experts classify US unilateral sanctions as crimes against humanity, acts of coercion, or even aggression. By undermining international legal norms and subordinating them to US domestic politics, such sanctions reinforce imperial dominance, erode sovereignty, and weaken global human rights protections—amounting to state crime.

US sanctions as state crime

US reliance on sanctions is part of a long history of political and colonial intervention. They disproportionately target Global South countries. Despite clear evidence of inefficacy and severe humanitarian harm, Washington persists in using sanctions, fueling crises like those witnessed in Latin America.

Sanctions should be recognized as state crime due to their destructive impacts. State crime is defined as actions by governments or state institutions that violate domestic or international law or human rights, causing systemic harm such as war crimes, genocide, forced displacement, or economic exploitation. Even if not formally criminalized, actions that inflict severe harm fall within this definition.

From this perspective, sanctions function as coercive tools enabling economic dispossession, human rights violations, and structural global inequalities, aligning them with broader criminological frameworks of organized, state-led, colonial violence. Experts emphasize that sanctions must be recognized as state crime to delegitimize them and dismantle the power structures sustaining them.

In 2023, UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan criticized Washington for using extraterritorial jurisdiction to impose sanctions on foreign individuals, warning that such practices raise grave human rights concerns. She highlighted the damaging effects of US sanctions on labor rights, freedom of movement, and the rights of foreign nationals linked to sanctioned entities.

Sanctions deadlier than war

Scientific studies show sanctions inflict devastating consequences on ordinary people, exacerbating poverty and worsening humanitarian crises. According to The Lancet, unilateral sanctions—especially those imposed by the US—are as deadly as war. Since the 1970s, they have caused over 500,000 deaths annually, with children and the elderly as primary victims.

Despite being presented as “non-violent alternatives to war,” sanctions often kill more than wars themselves. The Lancet estimates that over the past decade, unilateral sanctions have caused around 560,000 deaths per year worldwide.

Researcher Mark Weisbrot has argued that sanctions are becoming Washington’s weapon of choice—not because they are less destructive than military action, but because their casualties are less visible.

American officials, media, and power brokers consistently downplay or ignore the massive death toll caused by sanctions. As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright notoriously said in 1996 when asked about 500,000 Iraqi children killed by sanctions: “We think the price is worth it.”

In reality, the US knowingly inflicted such catastrophic harm. Sanctions, far from being humane alternatives to war, are politically expedient tools—ineffective in practice, morally corrosive, and devastating in human cost.