A safeguard, in international law, is a restraint on international trade or economic development to protect communities from development aggression or home industries from foreign competition.

In the World Trade Organization (WTO), a member may take a safeguard action, such as restricting imports of a product temporarily to protect a domestic industry from an increase in imports causing or threatening to cause injury to domestic production.

In the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, safeguards are intended to protect indigenous peoples and other local communities with traditional knowledge of natural resource management within efforts towards reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

The WTO and UNFCCC concepts are related within international law.