More than 40,000 people have died in Venezuela since 2017 as a result of the United States’ economic war against the country, according to a new report.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research report examines how US sanctions have reduced the availability of food and medicine in Venezuela. The report warns that the country’s humanitarian crisis will get worse so long as the sanctions continue.
The economic warfare targeting Venezuela is “a death sentence for tens of thousands of people” that “inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018,” according to the authors of the economic report, Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs.
The sanctions the Trump administration imposed in 2017 started a sharp decline in oil production that hurt Venezuela’s ability to “import medicine, food, medical equipment, spare parts and equipment needed for electricity generation, water systems, or transportation,” the report explains.
“These sanctions would fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the U.S. is a signatory,” Weisbrot and Sachs wrote. “They are also illegal under international law and treaties which the U.S. has signed, and would appear to violate U.S. law as well.”
Photo: “Protest against US military intervention in Venezuela” by Fibonacci Blue is licensed under CC BY 2.0
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