Sanctions and humanitarian outcomes: four decades of academic scholarship

Key Findings

Sanctions are the most common geopolitical intervention used to accomplish a myriad of geopolitical aims, such as preventing wars and bringing an end to armed conflict, human rights violations, and democratic regression. For instance, economic, financial, travel, and military sanctions have been imposed by the international community against the Russian Federation since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, although these have thus far been insufficient to slow Russian President Putin's war machine. Economic, financial, and foreign-aid sanctions have also been applied to Venezuela's oil sector by the USA to penalise the Maduro regime for increasing political repression, corruption, and undermining of democratic institutions. For decades, the academic community has been responding to geopolitical decisions by debating the effectiveness of sanctions in accomplishing their intended aims and demonstrating their unintended impact on local populations.