Tag
Economic restrictions imposed on countries, entities, or individuals. Tagged incidents involve sanctions causing humanitarian harm to civilian populations, secondary sanctions with extraterritorial reach, or sanctions imposed outside UN framework authorization.
9 incidents
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The Trump administration used its ICC sanctions order against three of the main Palestinian organisations that document abuses in Gaza and the West Bank and submit evidence to the International Criminal Court, freezing their US-linked assets and exposing anyone who works with them to sanctions risk.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The United States sanctioned a UN human rights investigator for performing the duties of her mandate, in what UN experts described as an unprecedented threat to the international human rights system.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The reimposition of FTO status on the Houthis threatens to deepen what was already the world's worst humanitarian crisis by chilling aid delivery, disrupting commercial imports, and creating legal risks for humanitarian workers operating in areas where more than half of Yemen's population lives.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A systematic campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court's ability to hold Americans accountable for war crimes, combining unprecedented sanctions on judges with demands to rewrite the Rome Statute itself. The campaign goes far beyond any previous US opposition to the ICC, seeking not merely non-cooperation but the permanent restructuring of international criminal justice.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
The administration imposed escalating sanctions on ICC officials -- including judges and prosecutors -- for investigating US citizens and allies, obstructing international criminal accountability and drawing broad condemnation from the UN and international legal community.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The systematically intensified US sanctions regime against Cuba has caused 20-hour blackouts, hospital closures, medication shortages for 5 million chronically ill people, and collapse of essential services. UN experts warned the measures may amount to collective punishment of civilians under international human rights law.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Trump used a national-emergency sanctions order to freeze the assets of the ICC's chief prosecutor and a senior aide because the court was investigating possible crimes by US personnel in Afghanistan. Human Rights Watch called it a 'perverse use of sanctions, devised for alleged terrorists and drug kingpins.' The order was revoked in 2021.
Grade 1 of 5: Significant Democratic Concern
Standing next to Putin at a joint press conference, Trump declined to affirm the intelligence community's unanimous assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit him. He also refused to implement congressionally-mandated sanctions against Russia following the Salisbury chemical weapons attack and on other grounds. The Senate Intelligence Committee's 2020 bipartisan report confirmed not only Russian interference but that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared internal polling data with a Russian intelligence operative.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
The IAEA confirmed Iran was fully complying with the JCPOA when Trump withdrew. His 'maximum pressure' campaign reimposed crippling economic sanctions, including on Iran's banking system, oil exports, and humanitarian goods. Iran resumed enrichment and crossed successive JCPOA limits. The campaign ended with the assassination of IRGC General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and Iran further accelerating its nuclear program — ultimately leaving Iran closer to a bomb than when the deal was in force.