OF THE ABSURDITY AND CRUELTY OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AGAINST A PEOPLE

By Moritié Camara, Professor of the History of International Relations at the Université Alassane Ouattara in Bouaké, Ivory Coast

Economic and financial sanctions against a member of the same microcosm inevitably produce a boomerang effect and the only beneficiaries of its positive repercussions are only actors outside the community concerned.

This can be seen in a Europe that has shot itself 11 revolver bullets in the feet to allow the Americans to fill their cash drawers thanks to the situation in Ukraine that the latter and the British have created from scratch.

Benin and all the regional countries that shelter the ports of Niger, which is a landlocked country, will suffer in silence (to continue to seem intelligent), the return of flames from the fire that they themselves lit.

The Nigerien children will be the only ones to go to the checkout to pay with their lives for the embargo on medicines in the name of a democracy that has never visited their country.

Putin was convicted of extracting Ukrainian children from conflict zones to bring them to the safety of his home.

In this logic of inverted value, the WAEMU, which is the real institution that sanctions Niger (9 sanctions out of 13), will inevitably receive congratulations from the Athenian gods for defending their creation (democracy), by writing a requiem for thousands of Nigerien children guilty of the actions of their fathers the military.

The embargo on Iraq has left 500,000 children dead and Madeleine Albright, the American Secretary of State, coldly considered on a television set that: "it was the price to pay for democracy". Our Lady has joined since March 23, 2022, these poor children in death and her first occupation before visiting her apartments in hell, was undoubtedly to convince them that their country, Iraq, is currently the largest and perfect democracy on Earth and Mars combined. It is a safe bet that they will not believe a single word of this incantation.

Economic and financial sanctions as an instrument of coercion in foreign policy have shown their limits since their first use against Germany in 1919 and seriously infringe on the rights of people, especially children.

The high priests must have this in mind whenever they want to punish a people for the actions of their leaders.

People are never bad, only individuals are sometimes bad. They therefore do not have to pay a high price through economic and financial sanctions, which have never been a panacea.