Implementation of the Preventive Function of UN Security Council Sanctions — Contemporary Challenges

Abstract

In the article the author assesses the transition of the United Nations Security Council from comprehensive to targeted sanctions in connection with the transformation of the sources of threats to international peace and security; comprehensively analyses the consequences of this transition in the practice of the Council: the changing of the role of sanctions, problems of targeted sanctions, the formation of a mechanism for sanctions monitoring. The author concludes that since the 2000s the Security Council begins to apply targeted sanctions not only because of the negative humanitarian effect of comprehensive, but primarily because of the change in threats to international peace and security, the sources of which are non-state actors. Primarily within the framework of the prevention of terrorist threats, targeted sanctions take on a new role and are applied as an instrument of a preventive nature. In turn, the use of sanctions as a preventive measure against individuals entails serious challenges in the area of human rights law. Above all, this relates to ensuring effective legal protection and a fair trial in the case of listing, limitation and deprivation of a wide range of rights while on the list, considerable difficulty or impossibility of de-listing. Because of the significant negative effects of sanctions, a new sanctions monitoring mechanism is gradually being established within the UN Security Council, which today represents a set of additional Council bodies on the technical issues of implementing sanctions regimes.