Sanctions and Human Rights: Humanitarian Dilemmas

Terence Duffy teaches peace studies at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and is director of the university’s Peace Observatory Programme.

It is a tragic fact that the increasing resort to economic sanctions has brought with it both burgeoning civilian suffering and humanitarian dilemmas for the staff who have to enforce any sanctions regime. Not even minimum humanitarian safeguards to protect the rights of the peoples who endure such sanctions appear to exist. Certainly, little is said about sanctions in the context of international humanitarian law. One of the most authoritative studies of humanitarian law, Frits Kalshoven’s Constraints on the Waging of War, barely alludes to the issue of sanctions and human rights.¹ Likewise, a highly scholarly article by senior International Committee of the Red Cross official, Yyes Sandoz, entitled “Implementing Humanitarian Law”, refers only to sanctions against states for violations of humanitarian law. It makes little specific reference to protecting the rights of peoples actually enduring economic or politically based sanctions.² Yet sanctions clearly have a major impact on the humanitarian situations of peoples and of entire countries. Such clear contradictions have frequently created quandaries for those officials in international organisations who have to “work” the sanctions regime. This was most spectacularly reflected in the resignations, amid considerable public concern, of two United Nations Humanitarian Co-ordinators in Iraq, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck.

Given these depressing realities, this paper questions the morality of imposing sanctions on entire populations. It begins by exploring the political aetiology of international sanctions and their location on the current international political agenda. The machinery of international law regarding sanctions is discussed and related to the workings of the UN system and of the International Court of Justice. Cuba, Iraq and Libya serve as case studies in an examination of the humanitarian impact of sanctions.

The paper also looks at the emerging international opposition to the use of sanctions, particularly from commercial quarters. In the United States and elsewhere, industrialists are increasingly at variance with foreign policy. Lobby groups are demanding viable alternatives to economic sanctions, such as the refinement of “focused” sanctions which target political regimes while largely sparing the general population. In addition, there has emerged an increasing divergence between the essentially conservative position on sanctions adopted by the US government and the more innovative policies pursued by the European Union. Finally, this article sets international sanctions in the context of the inequity of the “new world order”, whose asymmetrical structures of international decision making are in direct conflict with the alternative positions offered by countries such as Cuba, Iraq and Libya. In this context, the humanitarian dilemmas which arise as a direct outcome of the sanctions regimes are too frequently overlooked.

Civilian Suffering

Sanctions and human rights are inherently at odds, and it is myopic in the extreme to imagine that sanctions necessarily promote improvements in human rights in the targeted countries. Instead, they are more likely to lead to a deterioration in the lived experience of the vast majority of sanctioned peoples. Economic sanctions run contrary to the spirit of human rights because they explicitly and implicitly expose the ordinary people of the sanctioned country to considerable suffering. At times this amounts to a form of economic coercion. How far, from case to case, the imposition of sanctions actually constitutes illegal behaviour has been a highly contentious point in international law. “Economic coercion” as a practical concept is notoriously difficult to define.³ Be that as it may, economic sanctions have certainly been among the most unevenly, if not hypocritically, applied of international measures. In fact, which countries actually get targeted for such legislation depends far more upon the current political agenda than it does upon international law.

There can be little doubt that international politics to a large degree explained the relatively limited impact of sanctions that were applied for years against the apartheid government in South Africa, compared with the severe effects of US sanctions against revolutionary regimes such as Cuba and Libya. The case of Cuba has been carefully documented by Anna Schreiber who identifies US treatment of the island as an example of “economic coercion as an instrument of foreign policy”.⁴ One of the most significant features of US policy on Cuba is not just the hardship inflicted on the Cuban people, but the political pressure which the United States exerts on other countries to ensure their compliance with the embargo. The US State Department has done everything possible to undermine the Castro regime. It has long advocated the use of sanctions in the interests of foreign policy considerations and has maintained an extensive embargo programme, including sanctions in “back-garden” spheres of interest such as Nicaragua. The use of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy has determined diplomatic and economic relations between the United States and Libya almost since Muammar Qaddafi became a key regional political actor. Whatever the political context, the use of economic sanctions will have a detrimental impact on the human rights of the affected people, and at times this is contrary to international law.

Libya

Sanctions are directly connected to the realities of global hegemony, one of the most significant of which is the hidden agenda of political considerations underlying the imposition of any sanctions regime. Libya has been a recurring foreign policy preoccupation for US administrations since the early 1980s. A long track record of support for radical liberation movements made Libya a soft target for accusations of sponsoring acts of terrorism.⁵ The Lockerbie bombing of December 1988, in which scores of people died when a Pan Am airliner was destroyed over Scotland, became the pretext for new sanctions against Libya, this time through UN Security Council resolutions whose drafting was strongly influenced by the United States and the United Kingdom. In January and March 1992 and November 1993, the UN Security Council passed three resolutions demanding that Libya extradite two of its nationals, suspects in the bombing, for trial in the United States or Scotland. The first resolution urged Libya to co-operate with the United States and the United Kingdom in their investigations into the Lockerbie bombing (and with France in relation to the bombing of another civilian airliner). The second imposed arms, diplomatic and air-travel sanctions against Libya. The third was directed against Libya’s oil industry and the country’s hard currency earnings. The strategy of the US Bush administration from the outset was to rush through the Security Council punitive sanctions resolutions before the International Court of Justice at The Hague had a chance to decide on provisional measures of protection for the Libyan population. When the court set a public hearing on the Lockerbie question for 26 March 1992, President Bush ensured that pressure was placed on members of the Security Council, including China (which was seeking most favoured nation trading status from Washington). Sure enough, a few days later, on 31 March 1992, the Security Council passed resolution 748, the first of its resolutions to mandate sanctions against Libya over the Lockerbie dispute. The resolution was passed by a vote of 10 to 0 (China and four other nations abstaining). This evidence of exploiting sanctions as part of the political machinery of the new world order has resonance not just for Libya, but for other embargoed countries that may seek the assistance of the International Court of Justice and find themselves obstructed by the actions of the Security Council.

The most severe consequences of the embargo (lifted in 1999) on flights into and out of Libya were humanitarian and medical. WHO and Unicef officials reported that the air embargo blocked medical evacuation of the chronically ill and affected Libya’s immunisation programmes. With only three approved medical air-ambulances to cover the entire population, and with the UN Security Council’s tight restrictions on how these ambulances could be used, those needing medical treatment abroad had to take the long land road to the nearest airport on the Tunisian peninsula of Djerba. Similar obstacles retarded the Libyan immunisation programme, as vaccines and other medical supplies were often damaged in transit or did not reach Libya in time to be of use.

Despite these problems, the Libyans failed to press the issue as hard as they might have done, even when government authorities such as the United Kingdom’s Sanctions Monitoring Unit requested Libya to provide more statistical data on the humanitarian impact of the sanctions, and especially on the question of medical evacuation. Although Libya’s humanitarian predicament was less severe than that of Cuba or Iraq, the medical situation in particular during the embargo years was undoubtedly worrying.

Cuba

For approximately forty years Cuba has been the victim of US sanctions, with inevitable consequences for the wellbeing of its population. In 1959, the United States began trying to destabilise Cuba, and as early as December 1960 it implemented measures intended to suffocate the Cuban economy by constraining exports. These measures were only the first in a long line of sanctions which culminated in the Helms–Burton Act of 1996. However, despite the difficulties resulting from the blockade, Cuba’s public health sector has developed admirably—an achievement Cubans view with pride. The damage to the Cuban economy caused by the end of Soviet economic aid makes the island’s determination to maintain existing levels of mother–infant health even more remarkable. Health goals set out for the 1990s in the action plan of the World Summit for Children, held in Geneva in 1991, were adjusted in light of Cuba’s special situation. Reports from Cuban ambassadors to the World Health Organisation, Unicef and the Food and Agriculture Organisation point to a small island which continues to struggle defiantly against the enormous economic and political might of the United States.

Iraq

One of the most dramatic examples of the iniquities that sanctions can produce is provided by the case of Iraq. Insights from FAO reports are of particular significance in examining the humanitarian tragedy that is Iraq today. FAO staff visited Iraq in 1997 to investigate the nutritional status of the population and assess crop and food availability since the imposition of the embargo in 1990. They met with the staff of UN agencies (Unicef, the UN Development Programme, the World Food Programme and the WHO), with government officials and with non-governmental organisations concerned with questions of food and nutrition. They travelled extensively, visited health, agricultural and food distribution facilities and carried out independent market surveys to obtain a cross-sectional assessment of food availability and market prices. Rough calculations for 1997 indicated that $2.7 billion worth of basic foods would have to be imported if anticipated shortages were to be met. These rather bland figures, however, suggest little of the humanitarian tragedy that is so well documented in the reports of the various NGOs active in Iraq.⁶ The United Nations’ “oil-for-food” programme has proven only partially successful in alleviating human suffering. The resignations of UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator Denis Halliday and his successor Hans von Sponeck in protest at the civilian suffering caused by sanctions indicate the peculiar gravity of the humanitarian situation in Iraq.

Extreme food shortages in Iraq have been reduced by an efficient public rationing system which provides a minimum food basket for all Iraqi families, excluding those in the north of the country. However, this system is unsustainable and its collapse will have disastrous consequences for a significant majority of Iraqis. Worsening food availability and Iraq’s inability to repair the infrastructure for sanitation and potable water mean that the situation continues to deteriorate. It would now appear that resolve within the UN General Assembly to continue sanctions against Iraq is far from strong. It may be that pressure from member states will become so great that these sanctions will cease to be relevant because countries will simply cease to uphold them.

Sanctions as Realpolitik

International sanctions are highly revealing about the inequities of power in the new world order. All too often UN actions simply punish the poor in a futile attempt to discipline their leaders. The humanitarian effects of international sanctions in countries such as Iraq and Libya have been carefully documented in the reports of international and UN agencies. Recent FAO announcements on declining levels of childhood nutrition in Iraq are typical of this material. Sanctions have been shown to have little impact on ruling regimes. If anything, their effect is to consolidate the position of the embargoed head of state. Thus the potential “hidden agenda” suggested by policy analysts (i.e., regime destabilisation) is rarely fulfilled, although the civilian suffering produced by such measures is invariably great. How much particular countries actually suffer under international sanctions depends a great deal on the trade-offs between the political and economic agendas.

In general terms, where trade considerations are paramount, issues of human rights, or regional security, can be conveniently ignored by the countries imposing the sanctions. David Losman analyses this particularly well in his comparative study of Cuba, Israel and Rhodesia.⁷ Clearly, sanctions serve to further ulterior political goals. This point is made by S. A. Rumage, who argues that humanitarian intervention became the pretext for the US foreign policy agenda in Panama. As Rumage puts it, US policy in Panama was “neither legal nor moral ... neither just nor right”.⁸ So many blatant efforts of regime destabilisation or regional politics are justified as serving noble, humanitarian purposes but are implemented by hitting the poor. Thus international sanctions have become the building blocks of regional power politics. It would be naive to regard them as remote from global political considerations.

Hans Kochler has highlighted the contradictions between the United Nations as an international organisation and the overwhelming power of certain countries over all aspects of its affairs.⁹ This is certainly marked with respect to the uneven imposition of international sanctions. Sadly, in recent years, the dominance of the United States in the UN Security Council has tended to delegitimise many of the decisions made by the United Nations’ supreme body. This has led to appeals for a more democratic United Nations and for far-reaching reforms. The Democratic administration of President Clinton has maintained the antediluvian approach to international affairs of its Bush and Reagan predecessors, whereby the United States polices the globe. American foreign policy is rooted in defence of a system which sustains economic and political volatility. Opposition to this hegemony is emerging, particularly from the more politically forceful of the southern countries, but it remains to be seen how much impact these demands for change may have.

Sadly, economic sanctions have been blatantly used as a form of political coercion by the north against the south, and in this the United States has been the key player. Any force for change will have to confront US neo-imperialism and a worldview which is apparently too rigid to adapt to new possibilities. Certainly, the United States has rejected alternatives to the unequal international system it upholds. It has bullied independent leaderships and covertly challenged regional economic co-operation where it cuts against American interests. It has opposed socialism in every form and sought to undermine foreign governments which refuse to comply with its wishes. In such a context, the new world order must seem decidedly dictatorial to the struggling economies of the south.

Demand for Change

An emerging corporate and commercial groundswell against the use of international sanctions is, however, creating a drive for viable alternatives. Because of protests from US allies, the Clinton administration has yet to decree any foreign firms to be in violation of the Iran–Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), which was passed in 1996 primarily to impose sanctions on foreign corporations investing in the Iranian oil and gas sectors. It now looks likely that European companies, at least, will receive a waiver, freeing them from the threat of sanctions under ILSA. Although other non-US companies could still conceivably fall foul of ILSA, Washington now appears less enthusiastic about imposing secondary sanctions. Nevertheless, new sanctions legislation, some with implications for the petroleum industry, is currently under consideration. Indeed, over the last two decades, the US oil industry has accepted government stipulations with minimum protest. Conoco’s withdrawal from its contract to develop Iran’s Sirri oil fields in 1995 reflects the general rule that US oil companies seldom challenge government policy. However, the picture is rapidly changing with the race to seize the economic opportunities presented by the advent in Iran of the more liberal regime of President Khatami. It is likely that US–Iranian relations will continue to improve, and the overwhelming popular support for the Khatami moderates—demonstrated by the February 2000 parliamentary elections—points to continued change.

The enactment of ILSA and the Helms–Burton Law shocked US industry and created a backlash against sanctions. In this context USA*Engage, a coalition of US businesses that opposes Washington’s heavy reliance on economic sanctions as harmful to US trade, was launched in 1997. It already has over seven hundred members from diverse sectors of the economy, including many oil firms. Its mandate is to inform policy makers and the American public about the counter-productive nature of unilateral sanctions, the importance of exports and overseas investment for US competitiveness, and the role American companies can play in promoting human rights and democracy worldwide. USA*Engage argues that American values are best served by engagement, not isolation. The European Commission has implicitly endorsed this view, and the divide on sanctions between the United States and European companies is widening.

On a more academic level, the Harvard Program on Non-violent Sanctions and the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta are two of the leading US institutes currently exploring new measures which will be “kinder” to civilian populations affected by sanctions, while hitting the financial assets of political regimes. The Harvard Program has a detailed schedule of symposia and projects on the development of targeted sanctions. Likewise, the Carter Center has already conducted several high-level meetings on a number of countries whose peoples have been hurt by economic sanctions, but whose political leaders have remained stubbornly in power. It remains to be seen how effective targeted sanctions can be, given the apparent ability of ruling elites to buttress themselves against their impact.

One of USA*Engage’s most important successes has been to win influential backing for the Sanctions Reform Bill, which advocates a more responsible approach by Washington to the use of unilateral sanctions. The bill was introduced in 1997 by Congressmen Lee Hamilton (Democrat) and Philip Crane (Republican) in the House of Representatives, and by Richard Lugar (Republican) in the Senate. If the bill passes, the United States will employ sanctions less often, and with greater moral responsibility.

Some observers urge the virtual abandonment of economic sanctions in favour of more narrowly focused penalties to achieve the same results. Such penalties, targeted at specific offences or errant individuals, might prove more effective and less costly than full economic sanctions. Not only would their negative impact affect a smaller domestic constituency, but they are also more likely to win support internationally. For example, if the behaviour triggering sanctions is the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, then sanctions prohibiting the export of materials that could be used to manufacture such weapons might be appropriate. If a regime quells its political opposition, a fitting response could be to suspend state visits, while maintaining diplomatic contact. Greater use of such specific types of sanctions enjoys increasing support among the lobby groups of corporate America. The impact on trade is smaller, while the corrective approach can (it is argued) prove more effective than broad economic sanctions in eliminating aberrant behaviour in the regional and international political system.

New Sanctions

While there has been enormous corporate pressure to move away from sanctions, there are also forces pulling in the opposite direction, urging new varieties of sanctions to counter perceived threats to the international order. The Wolf–Specter Freedom from Religious Persecution Bill, for example, advocates sanctions against religious persecution. If the persecution is determined to be condoned by the government, all US exports to the country in question would be prohibited and all non-humanitarian US aid would be suspended, as would US approval of multilateral aid. Under the Wolf–Specter Bill, only religious persecution would automatically trigger sanctions; it does not target equally deplorable offences such as the torture of political prisoners. What makes the bill especially sensitive is that it is likely to affect countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, all of which are major oil producers and the first of which is a key US regional ally.

The US Congress is also currently considering new sanctions against Belarus, China, Nigeria and others, as well as sanctions against countries that condone child labour and against governments that are not chosen in free and fair elections. Renewed sanctions legislation remains a possibility unless the Sanctions Reform Bill is passed.

Much of the previous raft of sanctions legislation was drafted and passed in an atmosphere of political panic. This, at least partially, explains the susceptibility of US politicians to new sanctions measures. The belief that the TWA Flight 800 crash in July 1996 was the result of a foreign terrorist act helped push ILSA through Congress within a week of what later transpired to be an accident. Similarly, the executive order banning all US trade with Iran in 1995 was issued within two weeks of the Oklahoma City bombing, carried out by a US national, Timothy McVeigh. The erroneous initial belief that these tragedies were the work of foreign terrorists encouraged the resort to sanctions. The impact of the external political environment on sanctions machinery should not be underestimated. Such pressure often explains the predominance of economic coercion in the international order.¹⁰

One policy option available for exerting punitive action against a perceived threat is to use limited, “targeted” sanctions aimed at particular markets, such as the arms trade. However, targeted sanctions are seldom used, presumably because they are not considered as effective as broader measures. In the case of Iran, for example, US policymakers argued that the export restrictions in place were failing to dissuade the Iranian regime from its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (a policy Iran has always denied). As a result, US officials imposed unilateral economic sanctions against Iran. Targeted sanctions are just one alternative to a total economic embargo. Other alternatives might include offering incentives, the “carrot” instead of the “stick”. However, it is probably true to say that disincentives are more often resorted to than positive inducements to good behaviour.

There are also many cases in which the US government has sought to impose sanctions in response to “world order” issues.¹¹ For example, US law requires Washington to impose sanctions on governments that violate the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. India and Pakistan are recent examples. The US government is by no means alone in voicing concern about “world order” issues such as weapons of mass destruction, state terrorism, the denial of religious freedom and of other rights associated with democratic institutions. Nor is it alone in its temptation to use economic instruments as levers of policy on such questions. However, the growing use of sanctions has illustrated the hypocrisy evident in the contradictions between Washington’s harsh approach to Iraq and Libya, currently of little economic importance to the United States, and its increasingly positive position on Iran. Economic considerations relating to the proposed routing through Iran of a major oil pipeline from Central Asia have encouraged the possibility of new dialogue between Washington and Tehran.

A Humanitarian Tragedy

Sanctions remain an inherent contradiction in the international political system. It is certainly to be regretted that, as the primary global organisation, the United Nations has demonstrated limited concern over the use of sanctions for political purposes. At the behest of the United States and other members of the UN Security Council, the United Nations imposes sanctions which adversely affect the lives of millions of people. There are obvious injustices in this complex terrain, and a need to rethink the entire concept of sanctions. On a more positive note, there are continuing efforts to develop innovative alternatives to economic sanctions, and also to adjust the sanctions machinery so that that it penalises political leaders while sparing their populations. More significant still, the growing rift between Europe and the United States on the use of economic sanctions may eventually spell an end to their efficacy as a political tool. Continued defection or even vacillation among sanctioning countries will inevitably destroy the power of sanctions and create divisions both among nations and transnational corporations.

In all three case studies, Cuba, Iraq and Libya, the moral validity of imposing sanctions is far from clear. The United States has endeavoured to strangle Cuba over many years. The annual votes of the UN General Assembly against the embargo and the protests of Washington’s allies and trading partners have failed to produce a change of thinking on Capitol Hill. The United Nations has mandated crippling sanctions against Iraq and has done little to mitigate the suffering of millions of Iraqis. World opinion is swinging against the Iraq sanctions, but Washington appears determined that they shall be kept in place until Saddam Hussein departs the scene. Finally, UN sanctions against Libya were first suspended and then lifted after the agreement reached in 1999 to try the Lockerbie accused in Holland under Scottish law. As noted above, the sanctions were particularly severe in their medical consequences for Libya. But Libya estimates that the sanctions also cost its economy more than $30 billion. If the two Lockerbie suspects are eventually acquitted, Libya could have a strong case for compensation for the losses inflicted by the UN sanctions.

This paper has questioned the morality of imposing economic sanctions against entire populations. The humanitarian misery produced by such sanctions is invariably great, and those who suffer are inevitably the weak and powerless at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder of the embargoed country. If sanctions remain a feature of the new world order, we can be sure they will continue to replicate that order’s inequities.

Endnotes

1. Frits Kalshoven, Constraints on the Waging of War (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1991).

2. Yyes Sandoz, “Implementing Humanitarian Law”, in International Dimensions of Humanitarian Law (London: Henry Dunant Institute, Unesco and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1998), pp. 259–82.

3. Kenneth Abbot, “Linking Trade to Political Goals: Foreign Policy Export Controls in the 1970s and 1980s”, Minnesota Law Review 65 (1981).

4. Anna Schreiber, “Economic Coercion as an Instrument of Foreign Policy: US Economic Measures against Cuba and the Dominican Republic”, World Politics 25, no. 3 (1973).

5. Hossein Alikhani, In the Claw of the Eagle: A Guide to US Sanctions against Libya (London: Centre for Business Studies, 1995).

6. See, for example, Terence Duffy, “Economic Sanctions and International Humanitarian Law”, in Sanctions War against Iraq, ed. Carlos Varea and Angeles Maestro (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 1997), pp. 170–82.

7. David Losman, International Economic Sanctions: The Case of Cuba, Israel and Rhodesia (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979).

8. S. A. Rumage, “Panama and the Myth of Humanitarian Intervention in US Foreign Policy: Neither Legal nor Moral, Neither Just nor Right”, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law (1993).

9. Hans Kochler, The United Nations Sanctions Policy and International Law (Penang: Just World Trust, 1995).

10. These realities are interestingly argued in Raj Singh, “The UN and an Alternative Economic Order”, in New Perspectives for Inter-cultural Dialogue and an Alternative Economic Order, ed. Y. N. Kly (Vienna: Clarity Press, 1999), pp. 92–108.

11. Richard Ellings, Embargoes and World Power (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985).