Sanctions impact aid work

Curbs imposed by the West hinder relief efforts in needy countries, experts say

Sanctions imposed on some Middle Eastern countries by the West, particularly the United States, not only hurt peoples’ right to health and cripple access to basic necessities, but also make it more difficult for humanitarian aid workers to conduct relief work, experts said. In some cases, aid organizations overly comply with sanctions rather than risk hefty fines, the experts added.

Alena Douhan, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, said one of the problems that nongovernmental organizations face is a failure to understand which sanctions are imposed against a specific country.

In a global appeal, the UN has repeatedly urged a rethink on sanctions due to their impact on people’s health and other rights.

For example, the organization warned last year that an overcompliance with US sanctions was harming children suffering from a life-threatening skin condition in Iran. The UN also has expressed concern that a variety of sanctions on countries such as Afghanistan, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Venezuela and Zimbabwe may also impede medical and relief efforts.

Some efforts have been made to help humanitarian activities. For example, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution in December seeking to clear the way for aid to reach the Afghan people, who are in desperate need of basic support, while preventing the Taliban, which took control of the country following the chaotic US pullout in August, from obtaining funds.

Douhan noted that unilateral sanctions are often seen as only targeting a number of individuals, but in practice, these individuals are usually senior state officials who oversee their countries’ economies.

“Therefore, the position of any third country or third-country bank or company (is that if) the whole sector of the economy is under a sanctions regime, they reject dealing with them,” Douhan said.

Rasha Al Joundy, a research supervisor at the Dubai Public Policy Research Centre, said the primary purpose of sanctions is to prevent financing for terrorist activities or to constrain regimes that are perceived to violate human rights and commit atrocities against civilians.

Abdulghani Al-Iryani, who previously worked with the UN in the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen and the UN Development Programme mission in Hodeidah, Yemen, said sanctions “punish the population for the crimes of the leaders” and weaken society, making it easier for authoritarian leaders to control their people.

Douhan, the UN special rapporteur, said that when governments are deprived of all resources, countries are denied the chance to “interact normally with other states” and constrained in their ability to bring in necessary medical equipment, food, basic goods or machinery or to do bank transfers. This results in nontransparency and, ultimately, “the rising vulnerability of the people”.

At the same time, because of the impacts of unilateral sanctions and the overcompliance by banks and third-country nationals, the state is deprived of the ability to provide for the basic needs of its people, Douhan said.

Also, as the notion of humanitarian exemptions is “very vague”, gaining a clear understanding of such exemptions is another issue that humanitarian workers and nongovernmental organizations face, Douhan said.

Hussein Hassan, an international aid worker, said he hopes there could be a unified mechanism without hassles and conditions in which funds could be available in the countries where humanitarian workers are serving.

Hassan’s group was once given access to funds but on the condition that the funds had to be used within four months. This, he said, was because the donors wanted to close their fiscal year and report to their parliaments that the funds had been fully utilized.

Processing aid distribution takes two to four months, so by the time the supplies leave airports or seaports after completion of all procedures, about five months would have already passed, he said. “Sometimes when you are expecting supplies from suppliers outside the country, all of a sudden, the airport comes under attack, the ports suddenly close and then the supplies are stuck in the middle of nowhere,” Hassan said.