The Impact of Sanctions on the Socio-Political Rights of Somali Citizens

Ensuring the socio-political rights of citizens is one of the obligations of governments, which is clearly mentioned in the internal laws of countries. But guaranteeing these rights sometimes faces external obstacles. One of these obstacles is unilateral and multilateral sanctions. In spite of the fact that the states imposing sanctions always deny such an effect, but most of the researches conducted in this regard have rejected this proposition. One of the countries that has experienced the longest and most extensive unilateral and multilateral sanctions is Somalia. This article aims to answer the question: what effect did the sanctions have on the socio-political rights of Somali citizens? The hypothesis of the research points out that sanctions affect ordinary citizens more than the political system and its leaders. Therefore, they violate the socio-political rights of Somali citizens. To answer the research question; we used the global indicators of the right to life, the right to health, and the quality of governance during the period of sanctions against Somalia. The gathered data was evaluated with a documentary-descriptive method. The research findings empirically showed that the right to life and the right to health has been severely violated in Somalia during the years of sanctions, and the sanctions have not been able to bring about any improvement in governance indicators in this country. Also, from the theoretical dimension, the findings of other researchers regarding the negative effects of sanctions on human rights were confirmed.