Since the early 2000s, sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council, alongside measures by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, have increasingly taken the form of “targeted” sanctions. These include asset freezes, travel bans, and arms embargoes directed at specific individuals and entities. While intended to pressure political elites and minimize civilian harm, the effectiveness of these measures remains contested, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected contexts like in the DRC.

This essay examines how international sanctions imposed on key figures in Zimbabwe have disrupted remittance flows from Zimbabwean migrants working in care jobs abroad, such as caring for children or the elderly. These workers bear the emotional burdens of caring for people on both sides: the individuals they assist in destination countries and their families in Zimbabwe. Remittances are an essential aspect of the latter, as they play a crucial role in shaping the family relationships of migrants and their families. The fact that these migrants send money to family members residing in a country under a heavily sanctioned regime poses specific challenges for Zimbabwean migrants and their families. Migrants are faced with high fees and must rely on informal money transfer channels, which carry significant risks. These costs and risks ultimately hinder the steady flow of money to their families back home. International sanctions thus add a significant burden to the many challenges faced by Zimbabwean migrant care workers: the high cost of sending money to their families back home and the resulting weakening of family and community ties.

Governments in Africa have been active participants in the big global debates on sanctions, particularly at the United Nations. In recent years, however, the bigger debates seem to be receding into the background as governments get tied up tackling the immediate and practical implications of ever-expanding sanctions by global powers. The growing number and complexity of sanctions regimes impacts African states even when those states are not targeted. And admittedly the approach of championing broad-brush positions (e.g. ‘illegality of unilateral coercive measures’ through the UN General Assembly) is not producing the necessary shield from impact. Sophisticated sanctions regimes are producing sophisticated economic impacts that need to be countered with technical depth, exploiting exemptions, adjusting and sanctions-proofing trading systems, developing sanctions expertise, etc.

Economic sanctions are typically viewed as instruments of statecraft — mechanisms for foreign policy and international pressure. They have evolved from blunt, economy-wide measures to increasingly targeted tools directed at specific individuals, entities, and sectors. Though proponents of these more recent "smart" sanctions argue that such measures punish only bad actors while sparing ordinary civilians, Economic Sanctions from Havana to Baghdad challenges this assumption, arguing that no matter how carefully sanctions are designed, adjusted, or targeted, they retain the capacity to cause real harm to civilian populations.

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.

Joy Gordon’s twenty-one chapter edited volume is a massive contribution to the study of the character, legality, legitimacy, effectiveness, and impacts of economic sanctions in our time (Gordon, 2026). It is a major tome – certainly voluminous, seamlessly multidisciplinary, and quite encompassing. It is an excellent work of scholarship: thoroughly researched, written and edited; highly analytical; and very illuminating.

The International Law Association (Nigeria Branch) Africa Policy Dialogue will hold on the sidelines of the 82nd International Law Association Annual Conference in Vienna, Austria. The side event with the theme - Peace, Prosperity and the Future of International Law: Geopolitics and Geoeconomics in a Fragmenting World - was put together in collaboration with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Austria, the Federal Ministry of Justice of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and Aluko & Oyebode (ALN).

The book Economic Sanctions from Havana to Baghdad: Legitimacy, Accountability, and Humanitarian Consequences raises concerns of social justice, an important ethical issue about the legitimacy of sanctions, and concerns about the humanitarian crises that economic sanctions are bound to cause. Filipenko et al. define economic sanctions as mechanisms that involve restrictive economic measures applied by a country or group of countries to another country or group of countries to coerce the governments of those countries to change their policies. These measures are not only taken by countries against countries but also by international bodies against individuals and entities within countries. These sanctions at the international level are often used to exert political and economic leverage and secure a specific form of capitulation or change from the sanctioned country, entity, or individual.

This volume, Economic Sanctions from Havana to Baghdad: Legitimacy, Accountability, and Humanitarian Consequences, published in 2026 by Cambridge University Press, seeks to incorporate many of the perspectives that have been underrepresented in the academic discourse. This includes the work of scholars from sanctioned countries, such as Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria. It also includes the perspectives of practitioners, such as attorneys and humanitarian aid workers. In addition, this volume addresses issues that are complex, but of great significance. For example, while sanctions often include humanitarian exemptions for food, the reality is that the regulatory regimes are so burdensome and unclear that private actors—banks, shipping companies, aid organizations, donors, insurers, and on and on—are driven away from engaging in even legal, humanitarian transactions.

The African Society of International Law (AfSIL) invites registration for its 15th annual conference on the “Africa and the Challenge of Reparation in International Law.” The conference will interrogate foundational concepts and practical modalities of reparation in international law, assess convergences and divergences across regimes and institutions, and examine Africa’s proposals, contributions and claims. AfSIL welcomes proposals that offer theoretical innovation, empirical analysis, comparative insight, or practice-based evaluation, with clear implications for counsel, adjudicators, negotiators and policymakers.