TWN Info Service on Health Issues (Oct26/02)
29 October 2026
Third World Network

UN: Unilateral sanctions erode multilateral cooperation, accountability
Published in SUNS #10543 dated 28 October 2026 

Penang, 27 Oct (Kanaga Raja) -- A United Nations human rights expert has warned that the growing use of unilateral sanctions, including measures targeting the International Criminal Court (ICC), is undermining multilateral cooperation and weakening international institutions responsible for accountability and justice.

"The measures targeting ICC officials, judges and prosecutors, human rights defenders and organisations and a fellow Special Rapporteur aim to intimidate, dismantle the international justice architecture and generate a chilling effect across the international system," said Ms Zaina Jallad, the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, in a news release.

More broadly, unilateral sanctions are imposing a protracted and inter-generational "human cost" on affected populations and crippling economies globally, she added.

New modalities and manifestations of sanctions have emerged, creating an increasingly complex and layered architecture that is compounded by overcompliance and de-risking by private actors.

The effects of these measures extend far beyond the borders of sanctioned States and often appear most acutely in humanitarian crises, the UN expert argued.

"Unilateral sanctions are being used as a tool of repression. They are undermining the conditions of life of entire populations that lack meaningful input into the political sphere that governs their implementation," Ms Jallad said. "We must not allow sanctions to be used as a means of collective punishment or coercion of rightsholders."

THEMATIC PRIORITIES

In her report to the current 81st session of the UN General Assembly in New York, the UN expert outlined a human rights-based approach that places the experiences, perspectives and voices of affected individuals and communities at the heart of the mandate's work.

She identifies eight core themes that will guide the work of the mandate, including attacks on international institutions; access to essential systems of life; overcompliance, de-risking and operation of humanitarian exemptions; effects on third States, migration and displacement; coercive conditionality; and immobilisation and confiscation of assets, property and sovereign resources, among others.

In her report (A/81/286), the Special Rapporteur said that the first theme concerns access to the essential systems of life, including health, food, water and sanitation, electricity, housing, public salaries, social protection and remittances.

Cross-country analysis has shown that unilateral economic sanctions are associated with elevated mortality, in particular among children under five and older persons, she added.

In addition, the Special Rapporteur and others have documented effects ranging from impeded medicine procurement to diminished public sector wages and rural production.

The second theme concerns overcompliance, de-risking and the operation of humanitarian exemptions, said the report.

The Secretary-General has reported that humanitarian actors continue to face financial hurdles and operational delays notwithstanding the standing humanitarian exemption, or carveout, which does not extend to autonomous measures that the Security Council adopted, it added.

In examining this theme, the Special Rapporteur said she will identify where exemptions fail between licensing and delivery of the exempt goods or services concerned and what changes in design or administration would correct it.

The third theme concerns development, recovery and debt. It is estimated that aid-related sanctions reduced development assistance for health and thereby negated a substantial portion of the gains in maternal and child survival that had been achieved in low- and middle-income countries in the period from 1990 to 2019, said the report.

In examining this theme, the Special Rapporteur will consider the ways in which such measures affect finance, debt servicing and public expenditure and, through them, the enjoyment of rights, as well as the conditions for recovery where measures are modified or lifted and the implications of such measures for the ability of peoples to pursue their economic, social and cultural development.

According to the report, the fourth theme concerns financial, commercial, digital and knowledge infrastructures.

The Special Rapporteur said she has documented cases of service providers restricting platforms and software, publishers and database operators blocking access and research institutions excluding scholars on the basis of suspected connections to sanctioned countries.

In examining this theme, the Special Rapporteur said she will trace such restrictions, including export controls on computing and cloud capacity, to the concrete rights and institutions concerned, including the right to education and health, the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and the right of access to information, as well as to the institutions through which they are exercised.

According to the report, the fifth theme concerns effects on third States, migration and displacement.

The Special Rapporteur has found that measures alter trade, finance and humanitarian operations in States that are not their object, affecting pensioners, whose banks abroad decline to release their funds, and United Nations entities, whose payments banks decline to process.

In examining this theme, the Special Rapporteur said she will trace these cross-border effects through remittance corridors, food-importing States and host communities.

The sixth theme concerns access to justice and remedy. The Special Rapporteur said that she has found that review of the measures, where available, is often confined to procedure, that de-listing can take years and that payment for legal representation has been refused even where authorized.

The Special Rapporteur will examine this theme in cooperation with other special procedures, devoting particular attention to measures directed at or affecting, judges, prosecutors, officials and experts of international justice institutions.

According to the report, the seventh theme concerns coercive conditionality.

It said sanctions relief, snapback provisions, escrow arrangements, controlled funds and conditions attached to assistance or reconstruction can structure negotiation, condition access to relief and shape the choices available to affected States and populations, including where restrictions persist during political bargaining.

The report said that arrangements whose legal character or connection to the Special Rapporteur's mandate is contested will be assessed on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the requirements of qualification set out in the methodology.

The eighth theme concerns assets, property and sovereign resources. The immobilization and confiscation of assets raise questions of due process, State immunity, private property and the permanent sovereignty of peoples and States over their natural resources, said the report.

The Special Rapporteur has addressed these questions in previous reports, and the positions set out in those reports form part of the record on which the present framework is built.

The human rights consequences of such measures will be examined where they affect monetary stability, public salaries, social protection and recovery, said the UN expert.

"In the absence of a principled, firm and effective response by States, the effects of unilateral sanctions will weaken the primacy of international law and further erode the international order," Ms Jallad said.

"States must recommit to safeguarding the multilateral system and the principles of international law and cooperation on which it rests." +