Zim takes call to remove sanctions to Geneva indaba
ZIMBABWE has once again called for the immediate removal of all sanctions imposed against the country, citing not only the illegality of such measures without a UN Security Council resolution, but also the demonstrable fallacy of the supposedly targeted nature of the sanctions.
The country also cited the undeniably negative impact the western punitive sanctions continue to have on all aspects of socio-economic development in Zimbabwe, and on the nation’s capacity to attain the Sustainable Development Goals in line with Agenda 2023.
Speaking during the Biennial Panel Discussion on Unilateral Coercive Measures ( sanctions) during the 54th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday, Ambassador Stuart Comberbach praised the work of Professor Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur, on the negative impact of sanctions on the enjoyment of human rights.
He welcomed her efforts to raise awareness of the widespread collateral damage inflicted on millions of completely innocent citizens in countries targeted by western sanctions, including Zimbabwe; and her efforts to collect, collate and publish empirical evidence detailing the significant harmful effect of such indiscriminate, illegal measures.
“The widespread resort to zero-risk and over compliance policies by banks and private sector players whose goods and services are critical to the functioning of any economy, have created serious obstacles to the full enjoyment of human rights, including the right to food, health, education, decent work, housing and the right to development more broadly”, said Ambassador Comberbach.
“In addition, the extra-territorial application of UCMs to third countries is undermining international solidarity, regional integration and global trade and investment flows.
“We call for the lifting of all UCMs and urge the Human Rights Council to do more to monitor and report on the negative impact of such measures on the full enjoyment of human rights in sanctioned states, including the right to development and the attainment of the SDGs.”
Speaking during the same debate, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University (USA) and SDG Advocate for the UN Secretary-General, noted that it was his own country, the United States of America, which, more than any other, wielded sanctions as a punitive, coercive foreign-policy tool.
Such unilateral sanctions, he noted, were “illegal” in terms of international law and in contravention of the UN Charter.
He noted that the US currently imposes sanctions regimes against approximately 25 percent of the world’ population - negatively impacting international cooperation, global trade and investment flows and, without any doubt, inflicting harm on millions of citizens in the targeted countries.
“Such sanctions are specifically designed to destabilise national economies and to deliberately undermine the social, economic and political stability of targeted states,” he said. “The intention of sanctions is to do tremendous harm, to cause massive disruption to social and economic life in targeted countries, and often, to force regime change.”
US sanctions, said Prof Sachs, were dangerous.
“These are punitive measures put in place by a stroke of the President’s pen,” he said. “There is no domestic political oversight of such sanctions in the US. No Congressional review. No court scrutiny and no court of appeal.
“Furthermore, there is as yet no global review mechanism and no global court of appeal relative to the unilateral imposition of such measures.”
Rejecting the EU’s questioning of the “appropriateness” of the Human Rights Council as a platform on which to discuss unilateral sanctions, Prof Sachs insisted that given that such sanctions constitute a direct contravention of human rights in all targeted countries, the council was indeed “the most appropriate venue” for the effect and impact of these illegal punitive measures to be exposed and discussed.
The council’s scrutiny of the negative impact of sanctions continues in the coming days with a session devoted to an examination of how such measures undermine the capacity of sanctioned countries to provide adequate healthcare services to their citizens.