Sanctions programs

Sanctions programs are the specific government policies that form the legal basis for designating individuals, companies, vessels, or other entities as sanctioned. While dataset metadata (see metadata.md) is data-centred and describes what the dataset contains and its limitations, program descriptions are law-centred and provide more context on the mechanism behind designated entities. For a full description of what programs are, how they are structured, and the measures taxonomy, see the public documentation.

Program field definitions live on the Program model.

Key creation and program registration

Program keys are maintained as YAML files in meta/programs/ in the repository (e.g. meta/programs/EU-COD.yml). The key field in the YAML is the canonical identifier. Before creating a new program, check the directory for an existing entry covering the same regime. If none exists, add a new file following the {ISSUER}-{TARGET} convention.

Linking programs in crawler code

Sanctioned entities are linked to programs via the programId property on their Sanction records. This is handled through the h.make_sanction() helper (see helpers.md).

For datasets with a single program, hardcode the key directly:

PROGRAM_KEY = "US-BIS-DPL"

For datasets covering multiple programs, pass the source's own program identifier via source_program_key. The helper resolves it to the canonical OpenSanctions key via h.lookup_sanction_program_key(). If the source key has no mapping, the helper logs a warning and returns None.