Unilateral and coercive sanctions imposed by governments can create severe and undue suffering for innocent people who bear no responsibility for alleged misconduct, the UN rights chief warned the Human Rights Council on Thursday.
Unilateral coercive measures by some governments are denying many people around the world the right to personal development, as well as holding back sustainable national development, four independent UN human rights experts said on Wednesday.
Independent UN rights experts on Wednesday warned that hundreds of Venezuelan cancer patients could die because they have been caught up in the excessively strict application of United States sanctions aimed at Venezuela and the state-owned oil company, Petroleum of Venezuela.
At the end of a two-week visit to Venezuela, an independent UN human rights expert noted on Friday that unilateral sanctions imposed on the country have exacerbated pre-existing crises, calling for them to be dropped.
A group of UN independent human rights experts have called on countries to lift – or at the very least, ease – sanctions to allow affected nations and communities access to vital supplies to fight against the global coronavirus pandemic.
A new set of unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States on Venezuela this week prompted the concern of the United Nations’ top rights official on Thursday, who said in a statement that she feared they would have a “potentially severe impact” on the human rights of the South American nation’s “long-suffering” people.
Economic sanctions must not be allowed to degenerate into blockades which “expose people to the ravages of economic war in peacetime” said the UN independent expert on the effects of sanctions on human rights.
