From Dumb to Smart? Recent Reforms of UN Sanctions

Abstract

United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts on Violations of Security Council Sanctions Against UNITA. Document S/2000/203, New York, 10 March 2000 (available online at www.un.org/News/dh/latest/angolareport_eng.htm), also called the Fowler Report. Targeted Financial Sanctions: A Manual for Design and Implementation. Contributions from the Interlaken (Providence: Watson Institute, Brown University, 2001) (available online at www.smartsanctions.se). Design and Implementation of Arms Embargoes and Travel and Aviation Related Sanctions--Results of the Bonn-Berlin Process (Bonn: Bonn International Center for Conversion, 2001) (available online at www.smartsanctions.de). Making Targeted Sanctions Effective: Guidelines for Implementation of UN Policy Options (Uppsala: Department of Peace and Conflict Research, 2003) (available online at www.smartsanctions.se). David Cortright and George A. Lopez with Linda Gerber, Sanctions and the Search for Security (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 249 pp. The former head of the Strategic Planning Unit at the United Nations Secretariat, Andy Mack, reports that he tried to find out, in the late 1990s, what the Secretariat and member states knew about the effectiveness of UN sanctions. (1) There were no reports on experiences with sanctions, no administrative setup to preserve institutional memory, and no implementation structures. At the same time, the UN Security Council was sanctions-happy. Since 1990, a total of fourteen sanctions cases have been mandated by the UN Security Council in accordance with the provisions of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, (2) with only two cases mandated (Southern Rhodesia and South Africa) during the previous forty-five years. The absence of intellectual and institutional foundations for the UN's sanctions policy partly resulted from a lack of relevant experience, but it was also the result of deliberate policy by member states, particularly those making decisions in the Security Council. In the early 1990s, they were quite happy to mandate comprehensive sanctions on Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Haiti, without having any real knowledge about their effects. They also had few reservations about deciding on measures, such as arms embargoes, in the absence of institutional structures at the UN to help to implement, or even monitor, them. Comprehensive sanctions soon came under strong criticism, from academics, humanitarian groups, and UN member governments alike. As predicted by earlier research, sanctions hurt the population without having much influence on decisionmakers. The naive theory of sanctions, that economic pain in the targeted countries will somehow result in gain by those imposing sanctions, had little empirical support. (3) While political goals were seldom achieved, humanitarian effects of comprehensive sanctions were often very real. (4) The reports from Iraq were particularly devastating. (5) The population was clearly suffering while the inner circle of leaders around Saddam Hussein thrived. Baghdad was quite successful in blaming the UN for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq, both within the country and worldwide. A deep and growing rift developed over Security Council sanctions on Iraq, and sanctions in general. Governments deeply concerned over the Iraqi sanctions, including France and Russia, resolved never to be in such a situation again. This implied opposing any future comprehensive sanctions regimes that would give a permanent member of the Security Council veto power against ending them. The strong effects of some sanctions on the general population, particularly in the case of Iraq, were one central element of the UN sanctions crisis. The lack of any impact on the targets in a large number of sanctions was another. The stand-alone arms embargoes, in particular, seemed like a bad joke. Warring parties had little difficulty in obtaining the weapons they wanted. …