This comes as a high-ranking United Nations official is openly criticizing the United States for imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran, Cuba and Venezuela that could lead to mass starvation. U.N. Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy said, “Real concerns and serious political differences between governments must never be resolved by precipitating economic and humanitarian disasters, making ordinary people pawns and hostages thereof.” A recent report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and economist Jeffrey Sachs estimates 40,000 people may have died in Venezuela since 2017 because of U.S. sanctions.