An International Call to Stop the Siege and Sanctions!

U.S. sanctions against countries across the Global Majority have become a key instrument for exerting imperial economic, military, and political pressure. Alongside trade and financial restrictions, these coercive measures are used to impoverish societies, isolate nations, hinder development, and restrict access to financial resources, technology, medicine, food, fuel, and other essential goods, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations.

The experiences of Venezuela, the long-standing siege of Gaza and Yemen, the blockade of Cuba, and recent acts of aggression against Iran are examples of the broader violent pattern of US imperialism. From Cuba to Iran, sanctions are imposed alongside military pressure, placing ordinary people under severe economic and social strain while restricting their access to essential resources and undermining national development and sovereignty.

The same powers that wage wars through bombs also pursue aggression through banks, sieges, trade restrictions, and financial isolation. Anti-war, anti-imperialist movements, and people of conscience around the world must organize to oppose these policies and stand in solidarity with the peoples subjected to them.

Such acts of coercion and aggressions against Iran, Yemen, and Cuba remain before international institutions. Regarding Yemen, the UN Security Council sanctions regime was extended until 14 November 2026, with the Council facing a decision on its continuation. The demand to end the U.S. economic, commercial, and financial sanctions against Cuba also remains on the agenda of the UN General Assembly. On 7 July 2026, the General Assembly placed the issue on its agenda for further consideration in the coming months.

Israel’s parliamentary elections on 27 October and the U.S. midterm elections on 3 November 2026 will also take place during this period. The coming months are therefore critical for raising public awareness, strengthening grassroots organization, and increasing pressure through direct action, protests, public and international advocacy, and efforts to document and expose the human consequences of sanctions, sieges, and foreign intervention.

This political moment provides an opportunity for movements, civil society, and public opinion to intensify scrutiny of these policies and their consequences. Expanding these discussions and actions can strengthen resistance movements and the peoples and nations confronting imperial pressure.

It is time for social, academic, labor, and civil society organizations to mobilize their capacities against policies that undermine national sovereignty and the right of peoples to self-determination.

The People Against Sanction & Siege (PASS) initiative has been formed to make sanctions and siege a global issue and to provide a platform for dialogue, solidarity, and international action.