Global sanctions regimes hit poorer people in target countries

BERLIN – A German think tank has found that sanctions imposed by the UN and the U.S. have hit poorer populations in targeted countries.

A study published by the Munich-based Ifo Institute says that countries covered by the sanctions regime of the UN have experienced a 2% annual decline in growth.

This represents a 25% decline in per capita economic output over the past 10 years.

The U.S.-led sanctions regime has led to a 1% decline in growth in targeted countries.

That equates to a 13% slump in per capita economic output, the study found.

Florian Neumeier, head of Ifo’s Fiscal and Financial Policy Research Group, said economic sanctions primarily affect the poor in these countries.

“Economic sanctions regularly hit the part of the population in sanctioned countries that live in or near poverty the hardest,” he said in a statement published at the institute’s website.

He said the sanctions imposed on Iran in 2012 mainly hit the young and uneducated population.

“This has been the case in the past, especially in the case of U.S. sanctions. Studies show, for example, that as a result of the sanctions imposed on Iran in 2012, it was mainly the young, uneducated population in the country that suffered,” he added. 

The think tank based its study on an evaluation of 160 countries. Of those, 67 were affected by economic sanctions between 1976 and 2012.

Neumeier said that his study was not able to analyze how the sanctions recently imposed on Russia will work.

That’s because the previous sanctions studied were all imposed on smaller economies.

The study’s authors found that economic sanctions in poorer countries also led to lower life expectancy.

The UN-led sanctions reduced life expectancy by an average of 1.2 to 1.4 years.

The data also showed that women were more affected by sanctions regimes than men.