Letter to White House Marks Exactly 75 Years Since Signing of Geneva Conventions
New York, NY — A new letter from legal groups, legal scholars, and attorneys calls on the Biden administration to end the use of broad unilateral economic sanctions, noting their civilian harms and illegality under international law. The letter, sent to the White House today, is signed by 38 organizations and 200 individual attorneys, including dozens of legal scholars.
The letter notes that, 75 years since the signing of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the collective punishment of civilian populations as a war crime, “collective punishment is a standard practice of US foreign policy in the form of broad, unilateral economic sanctions, such as those imposed on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.”
Signers include: Joy Gordon, Professor, Loyola University-Chicago; Aslı Bâli, Professor of Law, Yale University; Tendayi Achiume, UCLA School of Law; Obiora Okafor, Johns Hopkins University; Aziz Rana, Professor of Law and Government, Boston College; the International Association of Democratic Lawyers; the National Lawyers Guild, United States; the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights; the Progress Lawyers Network, Belgium; the National Association of Democratic Lawyers, South Africa; the Indian Association of Lawyers; the Asociación Americana de Juristas; and the Center for Constitutional Rights, United States; among many others.
The signers “[call] on the Biden administration to comply with international law by ending the use of broad, unilateral sanctions that extensively harm civilian populations.” They note: “While other countries apply sanctions in some form, the United States imposes more unilateral economic sanctions than any other country in the world, by far.”
Today, hundreds of millions of people live under US economic sanctions, notably in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela, among others. Overwhelming evidence shows that these sanctions cause severe civilian harm, sparking economic crises and limiting access to essentials like food, fuel, and medicine. They can increase poverty, hunger, disease, and death rates, particularly among children, and lead to mass migration, as seen in Cuba and Venezuela.
In writing that “Civilian suffering is not merely an incidental cost of these policies, but often their very intent,” the groups and attorneys point to statements made by past high-level US government officials such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who praised the detrimental effects of sanctions on civilian populations in Iran and Venezuela.
While the Geneva Conventions themselves may only apply in cases of war, the letter notes that the UN Charter, to which the US is bound under Article VI of the Constitution, reserves sanction authority for the UN Security Council. “Particular unilateral coercive measures” violate other treaties, such as the OAS Charter, and “in their humanitarian impacts, broad unilateral sanctions may also violate international human rights norms and law such as the Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” among other international legal obligations, “as documented by UN human rights experts.” The letter also cites repeated resolutions condemning unilateral coercive measures as illegal by the UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council.
“Economic sanctions cause direct material harm not only to the people living on the receiving end of these policies, but to those who rely on trade and economic relations with sanctioned countries,” said Suzanne Adely, NLG President. “The legal community needs to push back against the narrative that sanctions are non-violent alternatives to warfare and hold the US Government accountable for violating international law every time it wields these coercive measures.”
“Seventy-five years after the Geneva Conventions,” the letter concludes, “collective punishment must end.”
Read the full letter here.
