A/HRC/42/46 reserves and produces virtually all of Venezuela’s foreign exchange”. 33 This large-scale economic warfare has been widely documented, including by a United Nations expert (A/HRC/39/47/Add.1). Very disturbing accounts of the effects of these measures have surfaced, and it has been asserted in a report, of which one of the authors, Jeffrey Sachs, is a world-renowned professor in economics and senior advisor to the United Nations, that: The sanctions reduced the public’s caloric intake, increased disease and mortality (for both adults and infants), and displaced millions of Venezuelans who fled the country as a result of the worsening economic depression and hyperinflation. They exacerbated Venezuela’s economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans. Even more severe and destructive than the broad economic sanctions of August 2017 were the sanctions imposed by executive order on January 28, 2019 and subsequent executive orders this year; and the recognition of a parallel government, which as shown below, created a whole new set of financial and trade sanctions that are even more constricting than the executive orders themselves.34 31. The authors of that same report also found 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.35 Humanitarian aid as a weapon 32. The use of humanitarian aid as a weapon is another striking aspect of this “total” economic war.36 As noted by one commentator: Ostensibly aimed at alleviating Venezuela’s spiralling crises of hunger, health, and security, the humanitarian aid put forward by the United States also serves another purpose. Venezuelan opposition leaders here and the US officials offering muchneeded aid posit that the mission could induce military officers to turn away from their government. Aid groups on the ground worry, however, that a political operation thinly padded with humanitarian objectives could send a precarious situation down an even worse path – disastrous American efforts to intervene in Latin America from decades past serve as a reminder of how badly things can go.37 Attempts at using humanitarian supplies with a view to fuelling tensions within the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and ultimately provoking regime change arguably fall under the definition of unilateral coercive measures, which, based on Human Rights Council resolution 27/21, could be understood as measures including, but not limited to, economic and political ones, imposed by States or groups of States to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights with a view to securing some specific change in its policy (see also A/HRC/30/45, para. 13). Concerns have been expressed that “using what was apparently an aid mission to challenge 33 34 35 36 37 Steve Hanke, “The US declares economic war against Venezuela”, Forbes, 29 January 2019. Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs, “Economic sanctions as collective punishment: the case of Venezuela” (Washington, D.C., Center for Economic and Policy Research, April 2019), p. 1. Ibid. See also Pasqualina Curcio Curcio, The Visible Hand of the Market: Economic Warfare in Venezuela (Editorial Nosotros Mismos, 2017). See Dylan Baddour, “When humanitarian aid is used as a weapon to bring down regimes”, The Atlantic, 21 February 2019; Rachelle Krygier and Siobhan O’Grady, “In Venezuela, humanitarian aid has become a political weapon”, The Washington Post, 15 February 2019; Kelsey Gilman, “Why USbacked aid to Venezuela harkens back to a dark history of covert operations”, Public Radio International, 25 February 2019. Dylan Baddour, “When humanitarian aid is used as a weapon to bring down regimes”. 9