Sanctions kill
Speakers from four affected countries — Cuba, Nicaragua, Palestine and Venezuela — describe the deadly toll of blockades and sanctions, particularly on children under 5.
An October study published in The Lancet found that sanctions imposed by the United States and its Western allies during the 50 years of 1971 to 2021 caused more than 550,000 deaths each year, similar to the total annual deaths due to wars (both military and civilian) in the same period.
Children and the elderly were impacted the most, with children under five years of age making up 51 percent of the deaths.
In June, the United Nations General Assembly designated Dec. 4 as the annual International Day against Unilateral Coercive Measures, urging member states to stop using such measures (commonly called “sanctions”) because they violate international law and impose collective punishment.
On Dec. 3, the SanctionsKill Campaign and partners honored the day by inviting speakers to discuss the impact of these measures on children in four countries during a webinar called “Blockades and Coercive Measures: Stop the War on Children!”
The occasion was also the launch of a campaign in which health workers are asking the United States Congress and the executive branch of the government to stop applying these coercive measures because they kill as many people as armed conflict — mostly children.
(Read about the Health Workers’ Letter campaign on the SanctionsKill website here and read and sign the letter here.)
The webinar, organized by Americas Without Sanctions, a project of SanctionsKill, featured speakers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Palestine. Dr. Margaret Flowers of Popular Resistance and SanctionsKill, and Dr. Adlah Sukkar of Doctors Against Genocide moderated it.
The program opened with a clip from a new documentary about Cuba, Healthcare Under Sanctions, which illustrates why children die under sanctions regimes. Some of the impacts of sanctions on Cuba’s healthcare system are:
- The health system cannot maintain medical equipment due to a lack of parts because it is blocked from making purchases on the global market.
- Pharmaceutical companies and other countries refuse to sell essential supplies and medicines for fear of retribution by the U.S.
- Financial losses from the sanctions limit the amount of funds available to purchase medicines and other supplies.
As a result of the recent tightening of the economic blockade, infant mortality in Cuba, which has been lower than in the United States, is now increasing.
Although the United States frequently claims that carveouts in its sanctions programs prevent the purchase of medications and other essentials, such as food, from being impacted, the reality is that humanitarian carveouts in sanctions regimes do not work. Sanctioned nations are blocked from purchasing necessities abroad, including not only what is needed for the healthcare system but also goods for farming and the production of other essentials.
Following the film, the first speaker on the panel, Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch, a Palestinian refugee from the West Bank and executive director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), gave heart-wrenching testimony of the trauma Palestinian children have experienced since 1948.
He said, “There is no childhood for Palestinian children,” who are born into families barely surviving the collective punishment imposed on them by Israeli sanctions, curfews, and human rights violations.
Shamrouch stressed that before the visible genocide began on Oct. 7, 2023, a silent genocide was taking place in Gaza due to the 16-year blockade, in which tens of thousands of people died because they were unable to leave the Strip to receive medical care or even get Covid-19 vaccines.
Currently, the Palestinian population faces an ineffective ceasefire during which 365 people have been killed by guns and bombs so far. In addition, 9,600 children under age 5 are in imminent danger of dying from starvation while they are blocked from receiving food and medical assistance. And 32,000 people injured by Israeli aggression will soon die because they are prevented from leaving Gaza to seek medical care, including 5,000 children.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government, which is overseeing the “ceasefire,” does nothing to hold Israel accountable.
Nicaragua Targeted Since 2018
The next speaker, Yorlis Luna of Nicaragua, spoke of the collective punishment her people have suffered due to the U.S.’ coercive economic measures. She was born just after the period when a U.S. proxy war and sanctions had devastated her country, and a new U.S.-friendly government was not providing healthcare or education to the population, which impacted her health.
As a teenager, she saw the return to power of a popular government and witnessed tremendous improvements in daily life. But the socialist-leaning government of Nicaragua, with an independent foreign policy, has been targeted with unilateral coercive measures (aka sanctions) from the U.S. since 2018.
Yorlis says that while increasing sanctions seek to demoralize people, the country is resisting by becoming food sovereign and relying more on indigenous medicines and other local products to make itself less vulnerable to economic aggression.
No Zooming From Cuba
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President Donald Trump signed an order to reimpose some sanctions on Cuba, June 16, 2017. (White House, Shealah Craighead)
President Donald Trump signed an order to reimpose some sanctions on Cuba, June 16, 2017. (White House, Shealah Craighead)Dr. Mariuska Forteza Sáez, chief of pediatric oncology at the National Institute of Oncology and Radiobiology of Cuba, sent video greetings because Zoom is not allowed in her country due to the blockade. Dr. Forteza spoke with pride of Cuba’s achievement of a 65 percent cancer survival rate — remarkable for a low-income country.
However, these positive outcomes are hindered by new coercive measures from the U.S. Cuban medical teams must be creative in finding solutions for their patients, as it is increasingly difficult to obtain the first-line medicines and supplies needed for treatment, such as endoprostheses.
These highly specialized treatments also require continuous training outside the country, which is often forbidden to Cuban doctors because of the blockade. Still, Dr. Forteza’s clinic has had many success stories with their young patients, including a teen who overcame osteosarcoma and went on to become a Paralympic athlete.
Venezuelan Sanctions Target Oil
In January 2019, U.S. National Security Advisor John R. Bolton, left, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced sanctions on the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA. (The White House, Wikimedia Commons)
The final panelist was Alison Bodine, a founding member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network, who spoke about the impact of sanctions on Venezuela.
Venezuela has been facing a tremendous U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean over the past few months, which has a psychological impact on the whole population, including children. But the country has faced unilateral coercive measures since President Barack Obama first imposed them in 2015. To date, these are estimated to have caused over 100,000 excess deaths in the country.
The sanctions target Venezuela’s oil industry, thereby depriving the Bolivarian revolution’s programs of funding to provide food, medicine, and housing to the population. This not only impacts poor children, but difficulties with banking transactions due to sanctions, for example, have prevented Venezuelan children from receiving life-saving medical treatment, such as specialized cancer treatment overseas.
While the webinar subject matter was heavy, the audience was left with an effective way to work together to change this dire situation. Drs. Flowers and Sukkar explained the Health Workers Letter campaign in which all health workers — including public and mental health workers, currently in training, working or retired — are invited to sign on to ask the U.S. government to stop applying these child-killing measures.
We leave you with the words of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs on this first International Day against Unilateral Coercive Measures: “Once again we call for dialogue and respect for human rights and for the self-determination of peoples.”
