Below is a talk given by Sara Flounders to the Americas Policy Forum “Burying 200 Years of the U.S. Monroe Doctrine,” held at American University on April 29. Flounders spoke at a panel entitled “Opposing Sanctions and Unilateral Intervention.” Our Sanctions Kill campaign is dedicated to explaini

First, there is resistance by developing economic self-sufficiency. North Korea, having survived 70 years of the world’s harshest international sanctions, calls self-reliance “Juche.”

I was recently in Nicaragua, which is now 90 percent self-sufficient in food. Nicaraguans coped heroically with COVID-19, providing door-to-door health care even as the U.S. blocked their access to vaccines. Education there is free. The Sandinista government has developed essential infrastructure, especially roads, health clinics and schools.

Nicaragua now ranks among the top five countries in the world in gender parity. Women fill more than half the seats in legislatures – local to national – and in administration, medicine and the rural economy, from bottom to top.