Human Rights and Economic Sanctions in Iraq (original) (raw)

UN Sanctions against Iraq: From Ailment to Chronic

Sanctions are penalties or restrictions imposed by a state, group of states or an international organization on another state, usually involved in the act of international delinquency, to compel that state to amend its behaviour or to change its conduct or policies. At present, sanctions have become an important tool of coercion which the United Nations (UN) applies against states that are indulged in threatening of international law or peace and established international norms. However, these measures can have immense effects for the targeted state and its population as a whole. The UN sanctions imposed on Iraq from 1990 to 2003 are considered the most comprehensive and effectively enforced sanctions. This case is an example of the grave cost in human suffering that sanctions can exert on a country which turns into almost a breakdown in economic, social and political structures. Due to its effects on Iraqi populace, UN sanctions tool has earned huge criticism from many commentators, stakeholders and international elites. An account will be provided of the effects of thirteen years long UN sanctions on Iraq and causing factors. During this thirteen years period, a criminal silence on the part of Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), Arab League and international community has been observed. Russia and China, the permanent members of the Security Council (SC), were not more than spectators during the period for some dubious reasons. The UN, the most prestigious international organization, strengthened the perception that it was a porous body and played a second fiddle to the U.S. It cannot be rejected that UN has been mostly protecting the interests of powerful nations. Furthermore, efforts would be made to figure out some useful recommendations for the improvement of UN sanctions mechanism so that the sufferings of the sanctioned society could be reduced in future sanctions regimes.

The Sanctions Regime against Iraq (1990-2003): Policymaking and Values

Public voices, 2016

From 1990 to 2003, US/UK policymakers insisted that the UN sanctions regime against Iraq was worth the cost, which, by 1999, amounted to half a million child deaths in Iraq. US policymakers emphasized that the ends (saving the world from Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction program) justified the means (the adverse humanitarian consequences of the dismantling of Iraq’s economy). The draconian blockade was especially disastrous for the women and children of Iraq. This paper explores the ethical dimensions of the sanctions while presenting an unorthodox view of foreign policy administration and generating new ideas for improving it. I argue that pro-sanctions policy managers had to defend a “Sophie’s Choice:” killing children to save other children. I argue that this was a false dichotomy operating in the US policy towards Iraq since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and that it served as a cover-up for a hidden agenda related to US hegemony in the Middle East region.T1 Interviews in 1999 with three pro-sanctions diplomats reveal the personal moral dilemma of defending a policy of infanticide while appearing virtuous in doing so. I suggest an alternative paradigm and a number of strategies that would ask policymakers whether they speaking truth to power.

Between Iraq and a hard place: a critique of the British government's case for UN economic sanctions

Review of International Studies, 2002

In this article I outline the case made by the British government for UN economic sanctions on Iraq, and indicate many of the silences in, and counters to, it. When these silences and counters are taken into consideration, the British government's denial of any share of the responsibility for the devastation of Iraqi society becomes unsustainable. Iraqis have had their human rights violated on a vast scale not only by the regime but also by UN economic sanctions which have exacerbated the effects of the UN coalition's bombing of Iraq in 1991.

New Approaches of Understanding Human Rights : Paradox of Sanctions at the United Nations

Asian Journal of Social Sciences Humanities, 2015

Despite extensive documentation of human rights, these rights are being violated by governments every day. In cases of widespread and severe violations on human rights, the Security Council has become unable to make any quick action subject to the Veto right and the conventional sanctions included as embargo, economic and use of force are not much effective and in some cases such as Iraq just add the political and social turmoil. In this article, first, we define and enumerate "sanctions" under UN system and then analyze the electivity of the current sanctions in international law. Among the conventional sanctions of international law, economic sanctions are common and have been widely imposed on member States such as Iraq and Iran. As one may notice, there are gaps in economic sanctions. The second categorization of sanctions is military ones that nowadays are applied in the form of humanitarian intervention. When a government perpetrates mass violations of human rights and genocide, there is an urgent need for the reaction of the international community. Then we contemplate on the challenges on the way of humanitarian intervention. There are also cases that States have applied humanitarian intervention without the resolution of Security Council. It seems there is an urgent need for a new generation of human rights guarantees that are not necessarily part of the UN system, but certainly it is consistent with its purposes. At last, we introduce the new generation of sanctions entitled as Collateral Agreements of Human Rights. We tried to make a comparison between sanctions in contract law and expand the model to international human rights law.

The United Nations Security Council Sanctions and International Human Rights

ICL Journal, 2016

This article assesses whether the United Nations Security Council must respect human rights under international law when acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. It argues that the Security Council has to respect human rights enshrined in those human rights treaties drawn up under the United Nations’ auspices and in non-peremptory customary international law, when this is not incompatible with the Security Council’s objective of maintaining or restoring international peace and security. The analysis also argues however that the Security Council must comply with peremptory international human rights, with no exception. The paper concludes that Chapter VII action by the Security Council is limited only to a small extent by international human rights standards.

IRAQ, SANCTIONS AND SECURITY: A CRITIQUE

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, 2002

Women’s pain and death blurs the distinction between war and peace. Women are disproportionately starved, attacked physically, emotionally and psychologically, and killed during both war and peace. This paper focuses on the sanctions imposed against Iraq by the United Nations Security Council (“Se- curity Council”) in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the on-going purported threat posed to international peace and security by the Iraqi regime. Intended as a humane alternative to war, the sanctions have nonetheless lead to such high levels of death and suffering, particularly among women and children, that commentators have labeled them “genocide,” a “medieval military siege,” and “a humanitarian disaster comparable to the worst catastrophes of the past decades.” Not surprisingly, critics of the Security Council have turned a plethora of human rights and humanitarian instruments against the sanctions regime. Feminist legal scholarship as well as scholarship from criminology, political science, sociology, peace studies and other disciplines help reveal that the definition of security that informs the Security Council and Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter makes certain policy options in relation to Iraq appear natural and necessary, while rendering others more obscure. This paper argues that a re-definition of “security” under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter is needed. Feminists have already spearheaded a redefinition of seemingly unassailable and steadfast legal terms such as “genocide” and “torture” so that they better reflect the experiences generated by the interactions of race, gender and other constituents of identity with international law. The term “security” must be unpacked and redefined in the same way. This re-interpretive task remains a crucial but unfinished part of thinking about women’s relationship to war.

Unilateral Enforcement of UN Security Council Resolutions - The Case of Operation Iraqi Freedom

SSRN Electronic Journal

The prohibition of armed aggression under Article 2(2) of the United Nations Charter is one of the most important developments in international law and international relations in the modern era. The fact that the right to wage war is no longer accepted as falling within the sovereignty of the state has ushered in an appreciably stable international order based on the rule of law and not the rule of might. While states obviously still engage in warfare and numerous wars have been fought by states in the era of the UN, the very fact that the prohibition of armed aggression has assumed universal acceptance as customary international law is a notable achievement. In spite of the prohibition of armed aggression under the UN Charter, self-defence and collective action mandated by the UN Security Council serve as notable exceptions. The US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 (i.e. Operation Iraqi Freedom) was peculiar because, the justification for the invasion hinged on the enforcement of UN Security Council Resolutions. This justification thus brought to the fore whether, under international law, there was the right to unilaterally enforce Security Council Resolutions. In the current resurgence of unilateralism typified by the US Trumpled withdrawal or threat of withdrawal from multilateral systems of international governance and cooperation, it is important to reiterate the lessons of unilateralism epitomized by the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the instabilities that have become offshoots of this invasione.g. the creation of monsters like the so-called Islamic State. This article discusses the resort to unilateralism under the guise of enforcing UN Security Council resolutions. It also engages in a brief discussion on the justifications for war prior to the UN Charter and the provisions on the use of force prescribed in the Charter. It uses the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a case study to shed light on legality of unilateral enforcement of UN Security Council Resolutions.