TWN Info Service on Health Issues (Sep25/01)
11 September 2026
Third World Network

UN: Unilateral sanctions expand amid eroding multilateralism
Published in SUNS #10511 dated 11 September 2026

Penang, 10 Sep (Kanaga Raja) -- Use of unilateral coercive measures has expanded amid weakening confidence in collective multilateral mechanisms, according to Zaina Jallad, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.

The share of the world's economy subject to unilateral sanctions has grown from 5.4 per cent in the 1960s to 24.7 per cent in the period 2010-2022, she said.

These developments point to the normalization of sanctions and counter-sanctions across national, regional and international settings, the rights expert added.

"Unilateral sanctions are creating severe humanitarian crises and punishing entire populations for political disputes they have no voice in," the Special Rapporteur said, expressing serious concern about the expanded use of unilateral coercive measures globally, from Cuba to Iran.

In her first report (A/HRC/63/29) to the United Nations Human Rights Council as the Special Rapporteur on the impact of unilateral coercive measures , she stressed that the latest escalation follows six decades of proliferating unilateral sanctions imposed outside the framework of the UN Security Council and applicable obligations under international law - the effects of which are often aggravated by extensive de-risking policies and over-compliance by third parties.

According to a UN news release, in Cuba, entire generations have lived under the constraints imposed by US sanctions, which obstruct fundamental rights - particularly those related to food, health, education, international cooperation and humanitarian support, as well as access to essential public services and infrastructure.

"These measures depress growth and development, increase indebtedness and undermine conditions of life for entire populations that have no meaningful participation in the political disputes giving rise to the sanctions," the Special Rapporteur said.

"Impacted populations are held hostage to conditions in which fundamental rights are denied, with the heaviest burdens falling on those in vulnerable situations, including persons with chronic diseases and persons with disabilities," she added.

In her report, the rights expert takes stock of the work of her predecessors over the past 11 years and sets out the direction in which she will carry the mandate forward.

The report lays out a framework that brings together the universality of human rights, the everyday experiences of affected populations, pathways through which harm is produced and the obligations of prevention, remedy, restitution and recovery.

"Embedding these elements as a constitutive part of the mandate's analysis is crucial at a time of profound strain on the multilateral order, when populations affected by unilateral coercive measures are increasingly unable to count on the protective architecture that the system was designed to provide," Jallad said.

"These measures intimidate States and other actors, generating chilling effects across the international system, erode multilateral cooperation and undercut the primacy of international law."

According to the report by the Special Rapporteur, as unilateral coercive measures have proliferated over the past six decades, the cost has fallen disproportionately on people whom the measures were not intended to harm: women, children, older persons, sick persons, displaced persons and entire populations in countries far removed from the political disputes that gave rise to the measures.

A cross-country analysis published in The Lancet Global Health in August 2025 associates unilateral economic sanctions with more than half a million deaths each year, a toll comparable to that of armed conflict globally, it pointed out.

The report said that a separate analysis in the same journal finds that aid-related sanctions alone increase infant mortality by 3.1 per cent, under-5 mortality by 3.6 per cent and maternal mortality by 6.4 per cent annually in affected countries.

The cumulative impact is that a substantial proportion of the world's population must contend with the spillover effect of measures whose human rights consequences the mandate was created to examine, it added.

The report also said that the populations affected by unilateral coercive measures are less able to count on the protective architecture that the multilateral system was designed to provide.

Reductions in development assistance, restrictions on humanitarian operations and the contraction of cooperative frameworks intersect with the measures themselves, compounding their human cost. Nor do the measures operate in a vacuum.

It said armed conflict, climate change, environmental degradation and indebtedness aggravate their effects on the populations concerned and are aggravated by them in turn.

According to the report, cross-national panel data covering 152 countries from 1971 to 2021 show a significant association between unilateral sanctions and elevated mortality in target States, with effects most pronounced among children under 5 and persons aged 60 to 80.

Between 1990 and 2019, the average low- and middle-income country substantially reduced maternal, infant and under-5 mortality.

A separate analysis estimates that a five-year episode of aid sanctions, which was the median duration observed in the study, would negate 64 per cent of that country's progress on maternal mortality, 29 per cent on infant mortality and 26 per cent on under-5 mortality, said the report.

In taking stock of what has been established through work under the mandate over the 11 years and setting the direction for the next phase, the report said the record it draws together describes a human cost that can now be counted, in lives lost, in development gains reversed and in futures narrowed, and it falls overwhelmingly on people who hold no power over the disputes that produced it.

That cost is the reason the mandate exists, and reducing it is the guiding objective of the Special Rapporteur's work, it added.

It said over-compliance stands at the centre of that account. The harm described in the present report travels less through the formal text of measures than through the decisions of financial institutions, insurers, suppliers and platforms that retreat beyond anything that the measures demand, and it therefore reaches people and transactions that no measure was written to touch.

It said because no State defends that outcome, it is also the ground on which cooperation is most available, and the Special Rapporteur will pursue it through sustained engagement with States, stakeholders, businesses and humanitarian actors.

The consequences fall on food, health, education and other fundamental rights, profoundly affecting daily life, the report further said.

"They fall unevenly, and hardest on those least able to absorb them, and, in turn, contribute to displacement and pressure on migration routes."

The Special Rapporteur said that she will keep that differentiated picture at the centre of her analysis, with particular attention to refugees and displaced persons, migrants and minorities, including religious minorities, and to communities whose vulnerability precedes the measures and is deepened by them.

"Pathways to remedy and restitution remain largely closed. Those affected too often cannot obtain meaningful review of the measures that affect them, cannot afford or even lawfully pay for representation and cannot access the international avenues for remedy."

In this regard, the Special Rapporteur said she will treat effective remedy as the test of every other commitment, will give particular weight to due process and to the questions raised by the freezing and confiscation of assets and will carry forward the normative work already before the Human Rights Council.

The report said humanitarian action must function when it matters most. It has been shown in the present report that exemptions that exist on paper too often fail in crisis, when licensing is slow, payment channels close and the burden of proving the humanitarian character of assistance falls on those delivering it.

The Special Rapporteur said that she will engage with humanitarian organizations, financial institutions and licensing authorities to ensure that assistance in emergencies moves at the speed of need and that the standing humanitarian exemption established by the Security Council finds its counterpart in unilateral practice.

Measures that reverse development, depress growth and push States deeper into debt determine the conditions of collective life for populations that have no voice in their adoption, and they engage the right of peoples to pursue their own economic, social and cultural development, said the report.

The Special Rapporteur said she will examine these effects, including the accumulation of debt under prolonged measures, as questions of self-determination and not only of economics.

Additionally, restrictions on access to advanced technologies, including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and digital connectivity infrastructure, increasingly determine access to the tools of modern economic and social life, and their human rights implications remain largely unexamined.

The Special Rapporteur will bring them within the established analytical framework of the mandate, extending the attention already given to the digital domain, and she will do so with the same rigour applied throughout the present report, ensuring that findings follow from the evidence, according to the report. +