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	Unilateral sanctions particularly harmful to women, children, other vulnerable groups by OHCHR, UN News, agencies   Sep. 2023   Over-compliance with unilateral sanctions a direct threat to peoples’ health and well-being: UN expert   Unilateral sanctions and over-compliance have a detrimental impact on the enjoyment of all aspects of the right to health, a UN expert said today.   “Health systems around the world are highly vulnerable to the enforcement of unilateral sanctions and the growing cases of over-compliance and excessive de-risking policies,” said Alena Douhan, Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures and human rights.   In her report to the 54th session of the Human Rights Council, Douhan highlighted the compounded negative effects of over-compliance with unilateral sanctions by the business and financial sectors, which pose serious challenges to the procurement and delivery of medicines, medical equipment and other humanitarian goods, which are by default exempted from any restrictions.   “The world is facing a proliferation of different forms and types of unilateral sanctions,” the expert said. “The growing use of secondary sanctions, as well as civil and criminal penalties for alleged circumvention of sanctions regimes, has serious negative implications for the human rights of people living in sanctioned countries, including their right to adequate, appropriate and timely health care” she said.   The Special Rapporteur questioned the efficiency and effectiveness of existing humanitarian exemptions, exceptions and derogations due to the complex and overlapping nature of sanctions regimes, burdensome and unclear authorisation/licensing procedures, continued financial restrictions and fear of potential civil or criminal liability for alleged violations of sanctions regimes.   “The impact of sanctions extends to a wide range of health-related issues,” Douhan said, pointing to the development of adequate infrastructure and facilities, the shortage of health workers in sanctioned countries and limited opportunities for their training, barriers to access to scientific knowledge and research, as well as disease prevention and control, new technologies and software.   “It also affects all relevant underlying determinants of health, including access to safe water and sanitation, food safety, and clean, healthy and sustainable environment, among others,” she said.   The expert recalled that the imposition and enforcement of unilateral sanctions and zero-risk policies violate numerous international treaty and customary obligations of States, including obligations under the UN Charter and relevant international human rights treaties, as well as other international standards and conventions, including occupational safety and health standards.   “Claims about the unintentional character of the adverse humanitarian impact of unilateral sanctions on human rights, and in particular on the right to health, and references to good intentions should not be invoked to legitimise designing and implementing such unilateral measures,” the Special Rapporteur said.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/09/over-compliance-unilateral-sanctions-direct-threat-peoples-health-and-well   Dec. 2022   UN resolution may enable safer and more efficient humanitarian and peacebuilding work. (BOND/UK)   On 9 December 2022, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2664, which should mark a step change in the ability of people in contexts subject to UN sanctions to better access critical humanitarian and peacebuilding support.   This landmark resolution, introduces a humanitarian exemption across all current and future UN sanctions regimes, with the exception of the Afghanistan regime which is covered by the exemption included in UNSCR 2615, adopted in December last year. It is hoped that this exception will also encourage UN Member States to adopt similar provisions in their autonomous sanctions regimes.   The impact of sanctions (and terrorist proscriptions) on humanitarian assistance has been a critical issue for many years. Sanctions and counter-terrorism regulations can delay, disrupt or even prevent provision of timely humanitarian aid to people in need and the delivery of critical peacebuilding work. In countries such as Syria, Somalia or Yemen, for example, aid agencies and financial institutions navigate complex and overlapping international and national sanctions frameworks.   The new resolution protects humanitarian assistance and other activities that meet basic human needs.   However, the potential for the resolution to enable strengthened humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts depends on its full, effective and timely implementation within domestic legislation. This should also give confidence to suppliers, banks and other commercial entities to fully support the uninterrupted provision of aid.   Resolution 2664 provides a general exemption across UN sanctions regimes and grants protection to all parts of the humanitarian supply chain, including downstream partners, in relation to specified humanitarian actors.   The resolution covers activities that go beyond immediate life-saving relief, and it requires Member States to consider the humanitarian impact of sanctions prior to their establishment.   There will undoubtedly be challenges ahead in terms of how the exception, and the principle underpinning it, is translated into UK law, and then applied in practice. The resolution includes safeguards to protect against abuses and evasion by sanctioned persons and entities, including by establishing reporting requirements.   The UN Emergency Relief Coordinator is required to arrange annual briefings to the relevant sanctions committees on the operation of the exception.   Ultimately, the resolution is unequivocal that “the provision, processing or payment of funds, other financial assets, or economic resources, or the provision of goods and services necessary to ensure the timely delivery of humanitarian assistance or to support other activities that support basic human needs” by UN agencies and those other humanitarian actors covered by the exemption is absolutely not a violation of the asset freezes imposed by the United Nations.   The exemption presents a significant opportunity for the sector. NGOs should press governments, to waste no time in implementing the resolution in a way that fully realises its intended benefits for people in situations of conflict and insecurity around the world. The resolution also sends a clear signal to governments to speed up ongoing efforts across the sector to secure humanitarian exemptions within autonomous, non-UN, sanctions regimes and terrorist proscriptions which also impact people’s ability to access assistance.   http://www.bond.org.uk/news/2022/12/landmark-un-resolution-may-enable-safer-and-more-efficient-humanitarian-and-peacebuilding-work/   Dec. 2021   Unilateral sanctions hurt all and are particularly harmful to the human rights of women, children and other vulnerable groups within the populations of countries targeted by the sanctions, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council said today.   “We already know that unilateral sanctions prevent the populations of targeted countries from fully enjoying their human rights; and that the impact is especially severe for vulnerable groups,” said Alena Douhan, the Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.   “Besides women and children, these groups include indigenous people, people with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced persons, migrants, people living in poverty, the elderly, people affected by severe diseases and others who confront particular challenges in society,” she said.   Vulnerable groups are often those who rely and depend the most on social or humanitarian aid, but the aid very often can’t be supplied because of sanctions, despite existing exemptions.   “The complexity of sanctions regulations, combined with extraterritorial enforcement and heavy penalties, have led to widespread over-compliance with unilateral sanctions by entities out of fear of the consequences of inadvertent violations breaches,” Douhan said.   “Because of this, banks are reticent to finance aid or process transactions for humanitarian purchases, and transport companies refuse to handle shipments of humanitarian goods. Humanitarian NGOs have sometimes stopped operating in sanctioned countries because of these difficulties.”   The Special Rapporteur notes that sanctions often include fuel embargoes and prevent targeted countries from getting parts to maintain essential life-supporting infrastructure, such as the food, water, sanitation, health and electricity supply systems.   “This is the case when a country can’t obtain fuel, medicines and medical equipment can’t be delivered and people can’t reach hospitals for medical care, including for tests and control in the course of pregnancies, for delivering babies, for vaccination of children and getting medical aid.   “Besides impeding the transport of people and goods like food, the lack of fuel and the inability to get spare parts hurts electric power generation, preventing electric pumps from supplying water for drinking and sanitation,” she said.   “Women in particular are impacted heavily. They are the ones that often have to go to obtain clean water for their families, and when sanctions cause economic activity to decline they are typically the first to lose their jobs and be targeted by traffickers for sexual exploitation.”   She further noted that this can cause a country targeted by unilateral sanctions to slide backward on the development scale, and warned that sanctions may be a major threat preventing targeted countries from achieving the universal Sustainable Development Goals that are meant to improve the lives of everyone, and especially the lives of women, girls, elderly, people with severe or chronic diseases.   “I reiterate my call, from a human rights point of view, to the United Nations, NGOs and other humanitarian actors to focus attention actively on vulnerable groups in sanctioned countries through ongoing monitoring and assessments of their human rights consequences,” Douhan said.   “I urge them to intensify their engagement through collaborating where possible and developing greater solidarity to ensure that the necessary humanitarian support gets through.   “Last but not least, I call on States and Governments that impose unilateral sanctions to lift or minimize them as required by international law; to take all measures necessary to avoid the adverse effect on human rights of unilateral sanctions; to take all necessary measures to avoid over compliance with sanctions regimes; to provide broader exemptions, simpler procedures, and to facilitate, in spite of sanction regimes, the delivery of humanitarian aid.”   http://news.un.org/en/story/2021/12/1107492 http://starvationaccountability.org/news-and-events/new-starvation-related-sanctions-digests http://news.un.org/en/news/topic/humanitarian-aid http://reliefweb.int/ Visit the related web page
	Covid-19: Wealthy states and pharma companies fail to ensure equal access to vaccines by Amnesty, International Commission of Jurists   Dec. 2021   Covid-19: Wealthy states and pharma companies fail to ensure equal access to vaccines, by Agnes Callamard - Secretary General of Amnesty International   Wealthy states and pharma companies have catastrophically failed to ensure equal access to vaccines, leaving billions of people without life-saving medicines this year, Amnesty International said today as 2021 draws to a close.   Despite repeated calls from Amnesty International and others such as the World Health Organization to ensure at least 40% of people in low and lower-middle-income countries are vaccinated by the end of 2021, wealthy states and pharmaceutical companies have continued to ignore these pleas.   “Although the world has produced some 11 billion vaccines doses – only seven percent of people in low-income countries have received a single dose. Why is it that poorer countries are being denied access to life-saving medicine while rich countries sit on piles of unused stock?” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.   “The emergence of the Omicron variant should serve as a wake-up call to the wealthy states and pharma companies that failed to address the pandemic at a global level. Failing to vaccinate everyone – no matter where they are from – leaves the entire global population vulnerable to new variants. The only way to break this vicious cycle is by ensuring everyone has access to vaccines.”   This year saw leaders around the world make numerous promises about sharing vaccines, yet time and time again they failed to honour them. In June, the G7 summit pledged to share 1 billion doses by the end of 2021, although reports suggest this target is yet to be met.   In September, US President Joe Biden and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen committed to donating an extra 900 million doses to low and lower-middle income countries by September 2022. While this is a welcome move, poorer countries are in need of vaccines right now.   Pharmaceutical companies have also failed to rise to the challenge. US pharma giant Pfizer has made misleading statements that its “vaccine would be available to every patient, country and community that seeks access”, while it has in fact delivered the large majority of its vaccines to high and upper-middle-income countries. Its rival, Moderna, was only able to develop its vaccine with the support of US government scientists and huge amounts of financial aid, but has also prioritised sales to wealthy countries. Both companies are still delivering less than 1% of their stock to low-income countries.   Moderna and Pfizer, along with other vaccine manufacturers, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson, have also, critically, refused to support measures that would temporarily lift intellectual property protections and share vaccine technology with other manufacturers around the world, in order to allow for a ramping up of global production.   All businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights. Above all, this responsibility means that companies should “do no harm”. If they discover that they are the cause of human rights abuses, then they must immediately stop their harmful actions and provide remedy. This is a widely recognized standard of expected conduct as set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.   But through their decisions, the vaccine makers have ended up causing or contributing to human rights harms suffered by billions of people lacking access to the Covid-19 vaccine.   “Around this time last year, the first vaccine was administered. More than 365 days later, whilst many in wealthier countries have received up to three doses, so many more in poorer countries have received none. We face the dismal reality – magnified by the brutal clarity of the pandemic – that some lives are simply considered more worthy of saving than others. What a truly devastating end to the year,” said Agnès Callamard.   “We hoped that international pressure would help wealthy states and big pharmaceutical companies to see sense, stop hoarding vaccines and share intellectual property rights, but greed got the better of them. Let’s hope their new year’s resolutions include making good on their promises and making sure everyone has the chance to get vaccinated.   “Many low-income countries are now struggling to deal with a deadly new variant while the majority of their populations haven’t even been vaccinated at all. Unless drastic action is taken now, Covid-19 will continue to wreak havoc for years to come and the key question now is, what will happen if large parts of the world remain unvaccinated? It has never been clearer that no one is safe until everyone is safe.”   Background: Since 22 September 2021, in line with others such as the WHO, Amnesty International has been calling on states and pharmaceutical companies to ensure equal access to Covid-19 vaccines so that at least 40% of people in low and lower-middle-income countries can get vaccinated by the end of 2021 with its campaign, The 100 Day Countdown: 2 billion vaccines now!   http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/12/covid-19-wealthy-states-and-pharma-companies-catastrophically-failed-to-ensure-equal-access-to-vaccines-in-2021/ http://www.srpoverty.org/2021/11/29/states-must-prioritize-health-and-equality-over-profits-and-vaccine-hoarding-un-experts-say/ http://peoplesvaccine.org/our-demands/   Nov. 2021   Global jurists call for waiver of global intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines - International Commission of Jurists.   Member States of the WTO who block or otherwise impede the adoption of a waiver of intellectual property rights for COVID-19 vaccines and other therapeutics are breaching their legal obligations to realize the rights to health, equality, life and science, the ICJ said today in an expert legal opinion published with the endorsement of over 85 jurists from across the world.   “International law requires that States stop impeding the TRIPS waiver and instead ensure global health solidarity in access to COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics”, said Sam Zarifi, ICJ’s Secretary General, in Geneva.   On 2 October 2020 South Africa and India submitted a proposal to the WTO Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), proposing a temporary waiver of the application of certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to allow for all States to ensure access to the full range of diagnostics, medications, vaccines, therapeutics, and other relevant health products required for the containment, prevention, and mitigation of COVID-19.   This proposal has received the support of more than 100 States but continues to be opposed actively or otherwise obstructed by other States, including UK, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and the European Union.   A number of UN Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council have called upon States to desist from impeding the waiver to ensure that all States can realize their human rights obligations.   The expert legal opinion, which has already been endorsed by more than 85 prominent legal experts, sets out States’ human rights obligations in detail, concluding that as the WTO meets later this month it is incumbent on all States to desist from blocking the TRIPs waiver.   These obligations are set out in several international treaties to which the significant majority of WTO member States are bound. Some 87% of WTO member States bear concurrent treaty obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and 88% of WTO member States bear concurrent treaty obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).   “As the opinion published today decisively details, States must cooperate to ensure the full realization of all human rights including in terms of their immediate obligations to ensure comprehensive access to COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics”, said Zarifi.   “What’s more there is ample precedent with this WTO for the issuing of such a waiver in order to protect public health, in the public interest”.   The opinion, which was elaborated through a collaborative effort with a wide range of experts and civil society organizations from around the world, remains open for further sign-on.   * Human Rights Obligations of States to not impede the Proposed COVID-19 TRIPS Waiver – See Report/Executive Summary via link below.   Background   There is acute inequality in access to COVID-19 vaccines across and within States. The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly decried the fact that the African continent accounts for a mere 2% of global vaccinations against COVID-19, despite Africa constituting approximately 17.5% of the world’s population.   Only 15 out of 54 African nations had met the WHO’s target to vaccinate 10% of each country’s population by the end of September 2021. The UN Secretary General has described this situation as ‘a moral indictment of the state of our world’ and an ‘obscenity’.   On 14 October 2021, six independent UN experts sent a total of 44 letters to G7 and G20 States, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization, as well as pharmaceutical companies calling “for urgent collective action to achieve equal and universal access to COVID-19 vaccines”, including through the issue of a TRIPS waiver.   The International Commission of Jurists has consistently supported the TRIPs waiver, including at the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.   The ICJ’s research has documented the far-reaching and devastating impact of the failure to adopt such a waiver in a range of contexts including Southern Africa, Thailand, Nepal, Palestine, and Colombia.   http://www.icj.org/global-jurists-call-for-waiver-of-global-intellectual-property-rights-for-covid-19-vaccines-and-therapeutics/ Visit the related web page
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