Sanctions and Silence – Intergenerational Trauma and Legal Gaps
31 July 2025
Author: Konstantina Karagkouni
A common misconception persists that harm can only be caused by, or stems from armed conflict. This view tends to relegate to the margins the harm inflicted by policies that may not appear to violate international law. Although states imposing sanctions often operate under the assumption that civilian harm will be minimised, in practice, such measures frequently produce significant suffering. In this post, Karagkouni examines the different types of harm sanctions cause, explaining that such harm may extend beyond immediate and visible effects. She explores different ways in which individuals may be affected by sanctions and considers whether such harm might extend across generations. The post reviews the legal arguments international legal scholarship has used to conceptualise harm caused by sanctions, while also reflecting on the challenges of recognising and addressing intergenerational harm under international law.
About the Beyond Compliance Blog Symposium
The Beyond Compliance Symposium has been developed within the framework of our research programme on Building Evidence on Promoting Restraint by Armed Actors. It brings together scholars and practitioners across the humanitarian, human rights, development and security sector fields to reflect on the conceptualisation of everyday negative lived experiences of armed conflict.
Understanding the personal, material, temporal and spatial scope of (civilian) harm and (humanitarian) need, as well as the characteristics and motivations of actors experiencing, causing, and exercising protective agency in relation to harm + need, represent crucial first steps in articulating effective responses. Contributions to the symposium also include reflections on legal and extra-legal strategies to prevent, reduce and redress harm + need, including through promotion of compliance with international humanitarian law and international human rights law and efforts aimed at generating restraint from violence and abuse.
Photo credit: © ICRC/ Daniele Volpe (01/11/2020, V-P-GT-E-00285) Guatemala. Chimaltenango, San Juan Comalapa. For the Day of the Dead, Rosa, 42, and her mother Feliciana, 79, pray in front of the altar the family has arranged to honor the memory of Encarnación Apen Curruchic, their brother, who went missing when he was 18.
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