Alex Zerden

Rachel Alpert, a partner at Jenner & Block and former State Department attorney, teams up with Alex Zerden, founder of Capitol Peak Strategies and former Treasury Department official, to tackle humanitarian sanctions. They discuss recent policy shifts that create exemptions for humanitarian aid amidst sanctions targeting terrorist groups. Delving into the challenges faced in regions like Syria and Afghanistan, they highlight the need for legal reforms and collaboration among organizations to improve aid delivery while preventing exploitation by extremist entities.

For years, the international community has wrestled with how to reconcile sanctions policies targeting terrorist groups and other malevolent actors with the need to provide humanitarian assistance in areas under those groups’ control. Late last year, both the Biden administration and the UN Security Council took major steps toward a new approach on this issue, installing broad carveouts for humanitarian assistance into existing sanctions regimes. To talk through these changes, Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson sat down with two leading sanctions experts: Rachel Alpert, a Partner at the law firm Jenner & Block and former State Department attorney, and Alex Zerden, the Founder and Principal of Capitol Peak Strategies and a former Treasury Department official, including at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. They talked about the long-standing issues surrounding humanitarian assistance, what these changes may mean in jurisdictions like Afghanistan, and where more changes may yet be forthcoming. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.