Dozens of legal organizations and more than 200 lawyers and academics from around the world today urged the U.S. government to end unilateral economic sanctions, which constitute collective punishment of civilians.
"The United States imposes more unilateral economic sanctions than any other country in the world," the collective expressed in a letter sent Monday to President Joe Biden in which they mention the cases of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The signatories warned that "collective punishment is a standard practice of U.S. foreign policy today in the form of broad unilateral economic and financial sanctions" and although it is not conventional warfare its impact "can be equally indiscriminate, punitive and deadly."
The missive argued that hundreds of millions of people are currently living under these types of economic sanctions that can cause severe and widespread civilian harm, including death.
It stressed that these sanctions trigger and prolong economic crises, hinder access to essential goods such as food, fuel and medicine, and increase poverty, hunger, disease and even death rates, especially among children.
The UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council have roundly condemned such measures as contrary to international law, international humanitarian law, the UN Charter and the norms and principles governing peaceful relations between states, he recalled.
"The suffering of civilians is not merely an incidental cost of such policies, but is often their very purpose," the letter warned, referring specifically to "a 1960 State Department memorandum on the embargo (blockade) of Cuba."
It suggested, it added, "to deny money and supplies to Cuba, to depress wages, to bring about starvation, despair and the overthrow of the government" on the island.
As members of the legal community, we call on the United States to comply with existing international law by ending the use of broad unilateral coercive measures, emphasized the brief, initialed in the United States by the National Lawyers Guild, among others.
"Seventy-five years after the Geneva Conventions, collective punishment must end," the letter to Biden concluded.