Speaking at the United Nations offices in Geneva on March 4, UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, Alena Douhan, and Obiora C. Okafor, UN Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity, said sanctions adopted by the U.S. violate the rights of citizens from many other countries.
“Emergencies declared by the United States often last years, and in some cases decades, and so do the sanctions they authorize,” the experts said. “Instead of being true emergencies, they seem like excuses to impose sanctions indefinitely.” The reasons the U.S. too often gives, such as international prosecutors efforts to investigate Americans suspected of war crimes, they say, ““None of these present an existential risk to the United States….
“The sanctions authorized by the U.S. on the base of announced states of emergency violate a wide range of human rights in China, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Nicaragua, the Russian Federation, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and other countries around the world, including rights to freedom of movement, of association, to due process such as fair trial and the presumption of innocence, as well economic and social rights and the very right to life,” Douhan and Okafor stressed.
They also charged that the sanctions affect the rights of those engaged in providing assistance for the reconstruction of Syria, and denounced the imposition of secondary sanctions.
They called on the U.S. to “fully and completely observe its obligations under the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] ICCPR to prevent any negative impact on the human rights of persons subject to sanctions authorized under the emergency declarations” — a very weak conclusion, when clearly the sanctions are illegal and should be cancelled.
