Economic sanctions are rules or penalties that countries use against others to try to solve conflicts. However, they don’t always work well for a few reasons:

1. Limited Impact on Leaders:

   • Sanctions often don’t bother political leaders or military leaders much. These people usually have other ways to keep their power and resources. Unfortunately, it's the everyday people who suffer the most. This can create big problems for them without actually solving the issues causing the conflict.

2. Risk of Making Things Worse:

   • Sometimes, sanctions can make problems worse. The countries being sanctioned might become more aggressive and unite under a sense of nationalism. Rather than helping to solve the conflict, this can lead to longer fights.

3. Weak Enforcement:

   • Sanctions don’t always work because countries often don’t agree on how to enforce them. This means targeted countries can find sneaky ways to avoid the sanctions by trading with nations that don’t follow the rules.

4. Unintended Strengthening of Leaders:

   • Sanctions can accidentally help leaders stay in power. When a country struggles economically due to sanctions, leaders can blame these rules, which can hurt efforts to create a democracy and improve civil society.

To make sanctions better, we could try other strategies:

• Combine with Talking and Negotiation: Sanctions should be part of a larger plan that includes talking and negotiation to find real solutions to conflicts.

• Targeted Sanctions: Creating more specific sanctions that directly address the main issues can reduce harm to regular people and encourage the leaders to comply.

In short, while economic sanctions can have some benefits, they don't always help create stability in regions facing conflict. We need to think carefully about how to apply them to make them more effective.