Legal boundaries to UN sanctions (original) (raw)
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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.
International Law and Economic Sanctions Imposed by the United Nations Security Council
2012
Nowadays and concretely after the end of Cold War, it is quite visible that the activity of the Security Council is showing a variation to the traditional conception of the international system, as the increase of actions starting from the invocation of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United nations was accompanied by new controversial outcomes. This paper intends to describe several legal issues related to the imposition of economic sanctions by the Security Council, in order to show that even if it appears that such organ of the United Nations has a wide margin of appreciation when maintaining international peace and security, there are some limits arisen from the Charter of the United Nations –assumed here as a constitutional device-, but also from other branches of International Law, conceived nowadays as relevant for the protection of individuals from the adverse effects of these measures.
The Applicability of International Law Standards to United Nations Economic Sanctions Programmes
European Journal of …, 1998
In the first half-decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the UN Security Council repeatedly decreed mandatory economic sanctions programmes under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Some of the programmes were severely criticized for their allegedly disproportionate effects on the populations of target states. The authors identify economic sanctions as a coercive instrument and assess the applicability of international law standards. Including the traditional criteria of necessity, proportionality and discrimination, to mandatory UN economic sanctions programmes. After an overview of the theory of economic sanctions and their place among strategic Instruments of enforcement, the authors review the Instances of mandatory UN economic sanctions programmes, assessing their effects on the populations of the target states and the extent of the Council's consideration of international legal norms In designing and carrying out sanctions. Concluding that the Council has given Inadequate consideration to International law standards In Implementing these programmes, the authors propose five legal principles for mandatory economic sanctions programmes: that highly coercive sanctions follow prescribed contingencies; that they be necessary and proportionate; that the sanctloners reasonably maximize discrimination between combatants and non-' combatants; that sanctions programmes be periodically assessed; and that relief bt provided to Injured third parties.
Unilateral Coercive Measures and International Law (with A. Tzanakopoulos)
The Left in the European Parliament 2022, 2022
Since the first Gulf War the world has seen a marked increase in the deployment of unilateral restrictive measures - sanctions imposed by individual states or groups of states against other states or private entities. The deployment of these measures is usually justified as a countermeasure against alleged human rights violations. While the international framework for the use of sanctions through the United Nations Security Council is clearly provided for in customary international law, the subsequent trend in the application of unilateral restrictive measures outside of the forum of the UNSC is less clear in terms of its legality. Although a number of EU Member States at first questioned the legality of these unilateral sanctions, the EU has increasingly emulated the US example of using sanctions as a tool of power assertion on the global stage. This legal review sheds some light on the legal basis surrounding these often punitive measures, examining the historical record and surveying the treaties and international agreements which have a bearing on the legality of restrictive measures under international law.
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.
International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis, 2010
Nothing provokes a debate like UN sanctions; there seems to be an instant polarizing quality to the topic. In the post-Cold War era, sanctions have become a key security council tool in responding to international peace and security situations. Sanctions are applied not just to stop hostilities, but to improve governance, protect natural resources, promote democracy, and decry abhorrent practices such as the use of child soldiers or the incitement to violence and hatred. The "sanctions decade" of the 1990s witnessed an 86-fold increase in the number of UN sanctions regimes employed, making sanctions the security council's most important and most used coercive tool.1 Twenty-three mandatory regimes have been created since 1990; 12 are currently active. The council is very likely, indeed encouraged, to reach for sanctions as an alternate to force in dealing with an international crises.Increased use, however, does not necessarily translate into increased success or effectiveness. For many analysts, UN sanctions are ineffective and generate too many complications and unintended consequences. The sheer number and long duration of sanctions regimes threaten to overwhelm the UN system's ability to monitor or manage them. With the advent of targeted sanctions, the full weight of the council, once reserved for states, is now aimed at individuals who do not necessarily have recourse to judicial remedy. And the jury is out on the degree to which any of these sanctions regimes are ultimately able to achieve their goals. These factors are all cited as evidence by those who argue that the heyday of sanctions is over, or that it should be.The vastly expanded UN experience in using sanctions as an international peace and security tool, and the resulting divergence of opinions on their utility, prompted the director of the Centre for International Relations at Queen's University, Charles Pentland, and the Canada Research Chair in international relations and security studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, Jane Boulden, to host two international workshops on the subject of UN sanctions. The first workshop, held in 2007, focused on the humanitarian impacts of sanctions. The second workshop, held in 2008, took a step back from the literature to explore what was new about UN sanctions and what could be learned from the considerable sanctions experience now under the UN's belt.The overall goal was twofold: first, to establish the current state of play in UN sanctions in the wake of the council's consistent, frequent, and increasingly innovative use of sanctions; and second, to consider how to evaluate that experience as we look ahead to future UN security council action. This issue of International Journal, dedicated to UN sanctions, tackles these two broad areas in a series of articles penned by international sanctions experts who participated in the workshops.In many ways the council's apparent wholesale embrace of sanctions as a tool mirrors its experience with peace operations. As with peace operations, the council's post-Cold War willingness, even desire, to address a wide range of international peace and security issues resulted in a wealth of new experiences and a concomitant, if often inadvertent, innovative bent. And as with peace operations, the council's efforts generated a whole host of unanticipated outcomes and unintended consequences, prompting new rounds of adjustment and retrenchment, lessons learned and applied.The result is a complex picture in which the council has developed a range of sanctions tools to address a spectrum of international peace and security issues. Indeed, rather than a single tool, sanctions can now more properly be seen as a whole drawer in the security council toolbox, in which a wide range of tools are available for use in a variety of situations against a variety of targets, including nonstate actors as well as states. This is in sharp contrast to the Cold War and the early post-Cold War period when the council mainly used sanctions as a blunt-force mechanism against a state as a whole. …
International sanctions before and beyond UN sanctions
International Affairs, 2015
UN sanctions are special. They are explicitly mentioned in article 41 of the Charter as one of the instruments available to the UN Security Council (UNSC) for maintaining international peace and security. Member states are obliged, via article 25 of the UN Charter, to carry out decisions taken by the UNSC, including decisions on sanctions. No other institution has such wide-ranging authority. In fact, a number of other international institutions, for instance the Governing Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, are supposed to call upon the UNSC if they deem it necessary to consider coercive measures against governments. However, in addition to the UNSC, many governments and regional organizations have announced sanctions (though not necessarily using the types of restrictions common in UN sanctions) or implemented measures which 'look' like sanctions announced by the UNSC without calling them sanctions. Non-UN sanctions are frequently implemented, sometimes against targets that are not under UN sanctions but also in cases where UN sanctions are already in place. In fact, there is a substantial overlap, in respect of targets, between sanctions mandated by the UNSC and those imposed by other international actors. This overlapping of UN and non-UN sanctions, whether in the form of non-UN sanctions preceding UN sanctions or in the form of combined sanctions, is the topic of this article. The emphasis is on two interlinked issues. One is the discussion of relationships between UN sanctions and other sanctions in empirical terms; the other is the question of a potential tension between the legitimacy and effectiveness of standalone UN sanctions on the one hand and combined sanction regimes on the other. The first section following this introduction investigates the relationship between UN sanctions and prior unilateral and/or regional sanctions. There are not many cases of UN sanctions being adopted without regional or other sanctions having already been put in place, usually by the United States or the European Union. Often, the measures adopted in UN sanctions are narrower in scope than the regional/unilateral sanctions that preceded them; and the latter generally remain in place even when UN sanctions are mandated, creating combined sanctions regimes consisting of UN and other sanctions. The next section empirically explores the cases of additional sanctions mandated by other international actors after UN sanctions have been put in place.
International Review of the Red Cross, 2008
There are several aspects to reviewing the role of punishment in ensuring greater respect for international humanitarian law. First, there is the question of improving compliance with the law, second, the focus on the punishment itself and, third, the characteristics of the perpetrators. The situation of armed groups is dealt with separately. The article also examines transitional justice as an accompanying measure and the problem of how to take care of the victims. Finally, suggestions are presented which could help the parties concerned in the establishment of a system of sanctions capable of having a lasting influence on the conduct of weapon bearers so as to obtain greater respect for international humanitarian law.
The Limits of UN Sanctions under International Law: The Case of North Korea
Journal of East Asia and International Law (JEAIL) , 2024
North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs have been a concern of the international community for many years. In response to North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006, the Security Council adopted one of the most controversial sanctions regimes in the history of the UN. After further nuclear tests in 2009, twice in 2016, and in 2017, the Security Council unanimously adopted even more new resolutions according to Chapter VII of the UN Charter, condemning North Korea’s behavior and demanding, inter alia, that it refrains from future nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The Security Council has tightened these sanctions over the years with a total of 10 resolutions. The UN sanctions imposed on North Korea raise many political, ethical, and legal questions. This article tries to answer them from the perspective of international law by examining the legal limits of the UN Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.