Sanctions Data
The Global Sanctions Network
An interactive map of every sanction case recorded in the Global Sanctions Data Base, Release 5 (GSDB-R5) — 1,806 cases between 1949 and 2025. Each tie runs from a sanctioning party to a sanctioned party and is coloured by the instrument used: trade, arms, military, financial, travel or other. Move through the years to watch the network build.
Open the visualisation full screen →
Best viewed on a desktop screen.
What you can read from it
- Two views. Countries places every state as a dot on the circle, sized by how many cases it is caught up in. Regions collapses the world into nine blocks and draws a chord diagram.
- Direction without arrows. A tie leaves the sanctioning side at the ring edge and lands just short of the sanctioned side. Hovering a country separates the sanctions it imposes from those it receives.
- Instruments, not volumes. Dot size and ribbon width count cases. A minor travel ban and a comprehensive embargo each count once.
- Coalitions. The EU, NATO, ECOWAS and others can be shown either as single actors, as the data codes them, or resolved into their member states as of the year each case began.
- Every view is a link. The address bar updates as you explore, so a particular finding can be shared directly.
Source: Global Sanctions Data Base (GSDB), Release 5, compiled by the GSDB team — Gabriel Felbermayr, Heider Kariem, Aleksandra Kirilakha, Ohyun Kwon, Constantinos Syropoulos, Erdal Yalçin and Yoto V. Yotov. Full definitions and reading notes are given below the visualisation itself.