Economist, prominent UN figure blames American sanctions for thousands of deaths in Venezuela

from Fox News (believe it or not)

A top economist who has worked for years with the United Nations is claiming that U.S. sanctions are responsible for more than 40,000 deaths in Venezuela and that such actions are illegal under international and U.S. law -- his latest attack on the Trump administration in recent weeks.

Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University and a Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) advocate for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, co-authored the report, “Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela,” which criticizes sanctions the U.S. has imposed since 2017.

“We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017-2018; and that 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,” the report, published by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), says.

“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,” it says. Sachs co-authored the report with CEPR's Mark Weisbrot...

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