Sanctions in international sports as a tool for responding to internationally wrongful acts: application and theoretical problems of the legal nature determination

Abstract

International sports are an integral part of international relations. Through the levers of international sports, political pressure, diplomatic influence, and direct sanctions can be applied to violators of the international legal order, primarily in human rights protection, ensuring peace and global security. The issue of the application of sanctions in international sports, the order of their application, efficiency and expediency, the correlation in this context of measures implemented by states, international organizations, and international sports (non-governmental) organizations, the possibility of consolidating the efforts of various actors, etc., became especially relevant after the beginning of the large-scale Russian aggression against of Ukraine.
 The study is devoted to investigating the experience of using sanctions in international sports as a tool for responding to internationally wrongful acts, the mechanisms of their implementation, and clarifying the legal nature of these measures. A distinction is made between different types of restrictive measures that can be used in international sports. First, these are collective sanctions based on formally binding norms of international law and are measures of international responsibility. This group includes the measures provided by the International Convention against Apartheid in Sports, and the resolutions of the UN Security Council set out the UN Security Council's powers to maintain peace (Chapter VII of the UN Charter - Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression). Secondly, these are individual measures implemented by individual states in the form of severing sports contacts, boycotts of sports competitions, and other actions of political influence, which by their nature are retorsions that are legitimate measures in response to an internationally wrongful act. Thirdly, sanctions are highlighted, which are means of influence on the part of international sports organizations - the IOC, various sports federations, and associations. The latter can be a reaction to both violations of sports rules and internationally wrongful acts