Advancing Humanitarianism through Sanctions Refinement

This bibliography is provided as a resource for scholars, policymakers, and journalists and it will be updated periodically. We encourage specialists and users to alert us to new thematically appropriate material that should appear in updates of this bibliography. The bibliography was authored by Beatrix Geaghan-Breiner until June 2022 and thereafter by Audrey Thill with […]

Held in May 2023, a second Wilton Park conference was conducted in association with Fourth Freedom Forum’s project on Advancing Humanitarianism through Sanctions Refinement (AHSR) and Open Society Foundations (OSF), with support from the Government of Mexico and Government of the Netherlands, and it aimed to afford an opportunity for a diverse group of stakeholders […]

Published in Phenomenal World, authors Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Zep Kalb take a look at the “distributional effects” of sanctions and whether they actually facilitate greater economic inequality and the concentration of wealth among the elite in Iran. They argue that to really understand sanctions, one must investigate how actors in a complex system relate to […]

This discussion paper by Delaney Simon explores recent reforms undertaken by states and how policymakers may use a ‘checklist’ and ‘code of conduct’ to reduce the collateral damage of sanctions regimes and evaluate the competing claims from passionate advocates for reform who are pleading with the outside world to ‘do something’ about a ruthless regime […]

A multistakeholder engagement was established in 2022 to undertake research and generate a set of voluntary principles to ensure that negative humanitarian impacts associated with sanctions and related regulations are mitigated and minimized. The AHSR team recognizes that targeted sanctions are vital for upholding norms and promoting international peace and security. When carefully designed and […]