Unilateral Sanctions in International Law and the Enforcement of Human Rights. The Impact of the Principle of Common Concern of Humankind.

Are unilateral economic sanctions legal under public international law? How do they relate to the existing international legal principles and norms? Can unilateral economic sanctions imposed to redress grave human rights violations be subjected to the same legal contestations as other unilateral sanctions? What potential contribution can the recently formulated doctrine of Common Concern of Humankind make by introducing substantive and procedural prerequisites to legitimise unilateral human rights sanctions? Unilateral Sanctions in International Law and the Enforcement of Human Rights by Iryna Bogdanova addresses these complex questions while taking account of the burgeoning state practice of employing unilateral economic sanctions

Rights-Based Boundaries of Unilateral Sanctions

This Article serves as a model for sender states to consider when designing and implementing unilateral sanctions and also provides a framework for targeted states to challenge the legality of sanctions. In this context, the Article investigates several multilateral treaties, including the United Nations (“UN”) Charter and its principles of nonintervention and sovereignty and its rights-based boundaries. The Article also investigates other rights-based treaties to determine if their member states may have any extraterritorial obligations to promote human rights beyond their borders. In addition, the Article analyses International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) rulings in cases where one party claims that the opponent is responsible for the rights infringements caused by its unilateral sanctions. It endeavors to determine whether a sender state may be held contributory liable as a proximate cause for the collateral damages that result from its measures on the people of the targeted state

Sanctions and Consequences: Third-State Impacts and the Development of International Law in the Shadow of Unilateral Sanctions on Russia

In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO member states and their allies have imposed “unprecedented,” unilateral economic sanctions to hold Russia accountable, degrade its military capability, and limit its international financial access.1 From the outset, sanctioning states such as the United States have stated that they “designed these sanctions to maximize the long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on [themselves and their] allies.”2 These sanctions on an economic power like Russia “have global economic effects far greater than anything seen before.”3 And there is concern that the unintended consequences of the sanctions will disproportionately harm developing states.Unilateral sanctions have long been a subject of contention within foreign policy and international law. Once conceived as the panacea to war, scholars have come to appreciate sanctions’ destructive impact too. Yet as the United Nations learned from the terrible humanitarian consequences of its sanction regimes in Iraq and Haiti and wound them down, there has been a rise in unilateral sanctions, particularly imposed by the United States, raising humanitarian concerns along with issues of extraterritorial jurisdiction and imperialism.The unilateral sanctions against Russia and the prospect of economic spillover effects felt worldwide, but most acutely in the Global South, call for a reexamination of how international law treats sanctions and their unintended consequences. Yet even in the midst of this fast-moving, massive, and complex set of unilateral sanctions there may be emerging welcome developments in the murky legal spaces.This Article proceeds in three parts. Part One reviews the unilateral sanction regime against Russia with particular attention expended on the unintended consequences sustained by developing states as well as exemptions that sanctioning states have crafted. The section also addresses the general literature on sanctions and humanitarian impacts. Part Two addresses the international law governing unilateral sanctions, focusing first on the principle of non-intervention and then exploring how sanctions may be classified as countermeasures. The section examines whether general-interest countermeasures are permitted and would apply to the current sanction regimes. The section also details how countermeasures do not adequately account for and protect the rights of non-targeted third states. Part Three then proposes both substantive legal changes and procedural mechanisms to mitigate unilateral sanctions’ unintended consequences. The section sketches a sanctioning state’s duty to prevent human rights harms to third states and to afford assistance to these states. The following section sketches a “lawmaking” and coordinating role for the General Assembly, clarifying what sanctions measures are lawful and resuscitating the UN Charter Article 50 process to ensure that third states enjoy a right to consult over sanctions and a right to necessary assistance. The Article concludes that a clarified legal and economic framework for unilateral sanctions is vital to the development of an international system dedicated to peace, security, and fairness

Unilateral Sanctions in International Law and the Enforcement of Human Rights

Are unilateral economic sanctions legal under public international law? How do they relate to the existing international legal principles and norms? Can unilateral economic sanctions imposed to redress grave human rights violations be subjected to the same legal contestations as other unilateral sanctions? What potential contribution can the recently formulated doctrine of Common Concern of Humankind make by introducing substantive and procedural prerequisites to legitimise unilateral human rights sanctions? Unilateral Sanctions in International Law and the Enforcement of Human Rights by Iryna Bogdanova addresses these complex questions while taking account of the burgeoning state practice of employing unilateral economic sanctions

The ‘Curiouser and curiouser’ legal nature of non-UN sanctions : the case of the US sanctions against Russia

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Rule-Based Dispute Resolution in International Trade Law

Why does the United States ever prefer to settle disputes under a system of rules rather than a system of negotiations? Powerful states are advantaged by negotiation-based approaches to settling disagreements because they have the resources to resolve individual disputes on favorable terms. By contrast, rule-based dispute resolution advantages weak states as a means to hold powerful states to the terms of their agreements. Then why did the United States want a rule-based system to settle international disputes in the WTO? To answer this question, we have to understand domestic politics as well as international politics. International constraints, particularly international courts, can influence bargaining at the national level by reallocating bargaining power among members of the government. This work addresses both the puzzle of the United States\u27 preference for rule-based dispute resolution and the broader implications for international law

Innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders: evidence from the gravity model of international trade about the effects of UN sanctions on neighbor countries

This paper examines two theories about the effects of UN sanctions on trade flows between land neighbors of the target country and the rest of the world. First, there have been claims that sanctions hurt neighbor countries by cutting off trading routes, increasing transportation costs, and disrupting established trading ties. We would expect that a neighbor’s trade with the rest of the world would fall, as a result. Second, there is extensive evidence that neighbors have been heavily involved in smuggling. As a result, neighbors should trade more with the rest of the world during UN trade embargoes, because now they also trade on behalf of the target. I employ the gravity model of international trade to show that, overall, a neighbor’s trade with the rest of the world tends to fall during UN sanctions episodes. This confirms the first claim above: overall, land neighbors have been “innocent bystanders” hit by UN sanctions.

War and the Coronavirus pandemic

Catherine Connolly reflects on the use of war metaphors in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, the violence of ongoing sanctions, and the need for solidarity in the face of alienation

Feeling Good or Doing Good: Inefficacy of the U.S. Unilateral Sanctions Against the Military Government of Burma/Myanmar

Part I of the Article presents a general overview of the use of sanctions as economic statecraft. Part II frames the U.S. unilateral sanctions policy analysis in the Burmese context. Part III of the Article begins the analysis of the political and economic variables that are regularly implicated in determining whether sanctions are likely to succeed. In Part IV, I suggest additional legal, social, and humanitarian variables that might better approximate the efficacy of the sanctions when considered in an episode-specific manner

Ballistic Missiles under Contemporary International Law

This article attempts to shed light on the incomplete and soft international legal framework regulating the Ballistic Missiles and the tools that the international community uses to strengthen it such as the international sanctions imposed by the Security Council on some countries that develop this type of missiles and the unilateral sanctions commanded by some countries such as the United States of America This is all in order to evaluate this framework identify its shortcomings and try to present a specific vision for its developmen