Human rights advocates suggest that traditional trade sanctions do the most damage to innocent populations, while leaving political and economic elites largely unscathed. The result is an ineffective policy that, at its worst, rises to the level of human rights violations. In response, human rights advocates have offered smart sanctions that target elites rather than the general population. However, if smart sanctions are to offer a practical humanitarian alternative for governments, then policymakers must have demonstrated evidence that such sanctions are also more effective. Otherwise, governments are left with an unattractive trade-off between effective sanctions policy and the protection of human rights, and this will likely limit the degree to which smart sanctions become adopted. This article systematically examines the effectiveness of smart sanctions across a large number of varied cases. The statistical results confirm that smart sanctions are more effective than traditional sanctions, undercutting the notion of a humanitarian versus effectiveness trade-off.