Mandatory Sanctions Research Articles

Notes: Mandatory Sanctions Miss the Mark: An Evaluation of Centre for Child Law & others v SA Council for Educators & others 2024 (4) SA 473 (SC)

Managing the conduct of public educators is the joint responsibility of the relevant provincial department of education as employer and the South African Council for Educators (educators’ council) tasked with upholding ethics in basic education. Each has its own disciplinary code and procedures to manage educator misconduct, and both include mandatory sanctions for misconduct such as assault. The Centre for Child Law challenged the disciplinary decisions by presiding officers in two assault cases where mandatory sanctions were imposed in line with the mandatory sanctions policy of the educators’ council. While the High Court found it a constitutional imperative that the educators’ council revise its mandatory sanctions policy, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) held that the policy unlawfully restricted decision- makers’ discretion. The disciplinary decisions made by the educators’ council were held to be unlawful, invalid and in breach of its constitutional obligations towards children. This note illustrates the risks posed by mandatory sanctions to the effective management of educator misconduct. It argues that the SCA judgment has broader significance for the management of misconduct, particularly assault, in public basic education and that the educators’ council and employer should abandon mandatory sanctions in response to educator misconduct.

Notes: Mandatory Sanctions Miss the Mark: An Evaluation of Centre for Child Law & others v SA Council for Educators & others 2024 (4) SA 473 (SC)

Managing the conduct of public educators is the joint responsibility of the relevant provincial department of education as employer and the South African Council for Educators (educators’ council) tasked with upholding ethics in basic education. Each has its own disciplinary code and procedures to manage educator misconduct, and both include mandatory sanctions for misconduct such as assault. The Centre for Child Law challenged the disciplinary decisions by presiding officers in two assault cases where mandatory sanctions were imposed in line with the mandatory sanctions policy of the educators’ council. While the High Court found it a constitutional imperative that the educators’ council revise its mandatory sanctions policy, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) held that the policy unlawfully restricted decision- makers’ discretion. The disciplinary decisions made by the educators’ council were held to be unlawful, invalid and in breach of its constitutional obligations towards children. This note illustrates the risks posed by mandatory sanctions to the effective management of educator misconduct. It argues that the SCA judgment has broader significance for the management of misconduct, particularly assault, in public basic education and that the educators’ council and employer should abandon mandatory sanctions in response to educator misconduct.

UN Security Council Sanctions and Mediation in Libya

Abstract The UN frequently employs sanctions on the same conflicts where it attempts mediation. While both efforts carry a UN stamp, they follow different political logics that are not always coherent with each other: sanctions are enacted by the UN Security Council, while mediation is led by a special representative/envoy of the UN Secretary-General, often on the basis of a Security Council mandate. This article explores two UN interventions in Libya that combined mediation with mandatory sanctions: the conflict leading to the overthrow of the Muammar Qaddafi regime (2011) and the civil war that ensued when the country was split between the first elected parliament and its successor (2014–2015). The Libyan case illustrates that the coherence of mediation and sanctions ultimately depends on the UN Security Council unity of purpose.

The International Religious Freedom Act: Non-State Actors and Freedom from Sovereign Government Control

The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) recently underwent its most significant amendment process since being introduced in 1997. Among the major changes, sponsors of the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act (Wolf Act) proposed adding a new framework to IRFA intended to address the phenomenon of non-state actors (NSAs) violating the right to freedom of religion or belief. The impetus for this new mandate, according to the bill’s sponsors, flowed from the realization that NSAs such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) were wielding religious intolerance to commit “some of the most egregious religious freedom violations.” Despite its findings that violent NSAs represented an expanding force responsible for exposing a significant percentage of the global population to severe abuses of freedom of religion and belief, the Wolf Act faced an uphill battle in Congress that necessitated significant compromises to secure its passage. As a result, the final bill modified or altogether failed to enshrine certain measures originally proposed to address NSAs. In their place, the Wolf Act instituted an ambiguous statutory definition for those NSAs that would be subject to scrutiny under IRFA. Furthermore, while the new “Entity of Particular Concern” (EPC) designation for NSAs identified as engaging in “particularly severe violations of religious freedom” appeared to mirror IRFA’s existing mandatory sanctions regime for “Countries of Particular Concern,” it fell far short by triggering only a suggestion that the President “take specific actions, when practicable, to address [EPC] violations of religious freedom.” As this new chapter for IRFA enters its third year, this Article will demonstrate that the NSA-related provisions present significant challenges for the U.S. government. To begin the task of fleshing out the nature and impact of these challenges, the Article focuses on one element of IRFA’s NSA definition — namely, the requirement that an NSA be “outside the control of a sovereign government.” After addressing IRFA’s NSA definition and providing an overview of its implementation to date, this Article turns to a critical appraisal of how the state control requirement has been implemented to date. The Article closes with several suggestions aimed at clarifying definitions and institutional responsibilities to repair current practice and reinvigorate IRFA’s promise of promoting and protecting the right of all individuals to freedom of religion or belief.

The General Data Protection Regulation: an overview of the penalties’ provisions from a Portuguese standpoint

The aim of this paper is to analyse the punitive regime foreseen in the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (GDPR). The administrative fines’ regime found in Article 83 of the GDPR and some of the questions it arises will be explored. We conclude that the Member States should adopt a critical stance when adapting their national legislation to the norms of the GDPR. The fundamental principles enshrined in national constitutions and supranational legal texts must be closely analysed and observed since the GDPR introduces a mandatory sanctions framework.

The Nationalization of Lonrho’s Business Interests in Postcolonial Tanzania

On June 2, 1978, the Tanzanian government under President Julius Nyerere ordered the British multinational corporation, Lonrho Limited, to leave the country. The “official reason” provided for this action was Lonrho’s “continued defiance of the United Nations mandatory sanctions against Rhodesia and the expansion of its business interests in South Africa.” Using newly available materials, mainly from the National Archives London, this paper attempts to document the rise of Lonrho in Tanzania up until the nationalization, the factors that influenced the compensation negotiations process between Lonrho and the Tanzanian government, and the role the British government played in the entire episode.

National Implementation of United Nations Sanctions

The implementation of the United Nations council sanctions by member states has gained increasing importance in the sanctions debate over the past 15 years. Having remained long neglected in academic circles, the sanctions review process sponsored by the Swiss, German, and Swedish governments over the past decade has been instrumental in putting the question of implementation at the centre of the sanctions research agenda.1 One of the main innovations that has characterized the sanctions landscape in the aftermath of the Cold War is the transformation of sanctions instruments: the classical trade embargoes that dominated the sanctions scene for most of the 20th century have given way to more sophisticated and carefully crafted measures. The establishment of targeted sanctions has been accompanied by other novel developments, such as the practice of targeting individuals rather than These transformations make it necessary to explore how the national implementation of multilateral sanctions has been affected, as well as its consequences for the efficacy of the measures.This article sketches the main issues surrounding the national implementation of United Nations sanctions. It identifies the most salient trends in the implementation of sanctions by individual states - and regional entity, namely the European Union - and outlines how they have been affected by the emergence of targeted, often blacklist-based sanctions. At the same time, the analysis endeavours to focus on the impact that new developments have on the efficacy of the measures concerned.The article is divided into four sections. The first provides brief introduction to the transformations in sanctions as tool over the past two decades. A second section outlines conflicting trends working both in favour and to the detriment of sanctions implementation. The third reviews the problems caused by the increasing encroachment on domestic legal orders by recent sanctions regimes. A final section discusses the difficulties posed by the violation of standards of due process resulting from UN blacklists, which merits special attention as it is the source of number of legal cases in Europe.THE UN SANCTIONS LANDSCAPE AND ITS POST-COLD WAR MUTATIONSThe use of sanctions by the UN council increased significantly in the aftermath of the Cold War. While the council subjected only two countries to mandatory sanctions prior to 1989 (Rhodesia and South Africa), Carina Staibano has counted 20 voluntary and mandatory sanctions regimes that were active between 1964 and 2005.2 As of the end of November 2009, there were 11 active sanctions regimes. UN sanctions practice has undergone series of transformations at different levels. For the purpose of our analysis, the innovations introduced in UN practice can be succinctly summarized as follows.In the early to mid-1990s, the UN council began to authorize sanctions to deal with internal armed conflict, especially in countries where state authority had collapsed, or so-called failed states. This was the case even in instances where internal conflict had limited external ramifications. From that point of view, the council departed from the restrictive interpretation of what constituted a threat to international peace and security that had characterized its practice since its inception. Apart from expanding the range of situations that qualified for enforcement action, the council also started to apply some of its sanctions regimes on only one of the parties in conflict, therefore manifestly taking sides. In range of internal conflict situations such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Angola, the sanctions targeted rebel groups. Similarly, the goals of sanctions regimes expanded to cover gross human rights violations, concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and international terrorism, thus acquiring new roles in preserving peace and security. …

Reflections on the Sanctions Decade and beyond

Faced with unwelcome external situations that threaten national or international interests, governments must decide whether to respond and, if so, what form their response should take. This decision-making process is more complex and likely to be more protracted when multilateral action is contemplated. Although no two situations are ever identical and it is important not to draw false analogies, there are often common, or comparable, features from which useful lessons may be learned, and a review of relevant past experience should be a component of intelligent statecraft.When diplomatic, political, and/or economic sanctions are under consideration as an alternative or prequel to use of force, there is now a wealth of experience to draw on. In second half of 20th century, continuing into 2 ist, unilateral, regional and, in post-Cold War period, United Nations sanctions have been extensively used. Indeed, 19905 have been described as the sanctions decade.1 There were earlier cases of unilateral and group sanctions, for instance United States' sanctions on Cuba, imposed in i960 and still in place, and in 1979 western response to Iran hostage crisis and to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But in years 1945-1990, sanctions were mainly a hot topic in relation to white minority rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and apartheid in South Africa. The Rhodesian government's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 resulted in comprehensive sanctions ordered by security council. In contrast, mandatory UN sanctions against South Africa were limited to an arms embargo, but significant boycotts were imposed by nongovernmental organizations as well as intergovernmental bodies and individual governments, contributing to South Africa's isolation and financial difficulties. There were lessons to be learned from Rhodesian case. Sanctions were by no means a quick fix as British Prime Minister Harold Wilson had forecast: Rhodesian economy showed surprising resilience and support of South Africa as friend and neighbour assisted Smith regime to survive for more than a decade.With end of Cold War, however, a new consensus developed among five permanent members of UN security council (Britain, China, France, Russia, and United States), and a spate of mandatory sanctions began with response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The Iraq sanctions remained in place until ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and there were also high-profile sanctioning episodes involving Libya, Haiti, and former Yugoslavia. Other cases were prompted by conflict within and between African states and by conduct of Taliban regime in Afghanistan.2As is well known, article 39 of UN charter provides that nonviolent measures may be ordered by security council to deal with a threat to or breach of peace or an act of aggression. AU members are then required to implement them. However, many potential cases of sanctions fall by wayside because one or more of veto-wielding permanent members protects its own or its client's interests. It is also important to note that among 10 non-permanent members of council there may be divided opinions: need to be onside with allies may be a factor in supporting a sanctions resolution, but if there is no veto only nine affirmative votes are needed. Some members therefore may have opposed resolutions that have been adopted. Nor can support for sanctions be taken for granted in UN membership at large. Secondary penalties for noncompliance are unlikely to find favour; inducements are problematic. Three basic facts about security council sanctions are that they may or may not be achievable, that terms of any resolution will inevitably reflect compromise, and that there will be varying degrees of enthusiasm for implementation. Political will among all those involved is a crucial factor. …

Agresi Dalam Perspektif Hukum Internasional

The end of Cold War, marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union’s communism has brought about the new political phenomenon. This phenomenon has given the impact not only to the dimension on international relations, but also, which even more important, to the evolution and progressive development of the world organization such as the United Nations. The application of a great mandatory sanctions under Chapter VII as for instance, which was never practiced during the Cold War period, had given a lot of legal perplexities, particularly the three components of that Chapter, namely action with respect to threat to the peace, breaches of the peace, and the last is the primary important, that are acts of aggression. Moreover, on the consideration of the question of ‘war of aggression’ constituting one of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdictions in the drafting of Statute of Rome, had been inconclusive, and no progress had been made. This article, therefore, may contribute to further development of the analysis of the core problem.

Agresi Dalam Perspektif Hukum Internasional

The end of Cold War, marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union’s communism has brought about the new political phenomenon. This phenomenon has given the impact not only to the dimension on international relations, but also, which even more important, to the evolution and progressive development of the world organization such as the United Nations. The application of a great mandatory sanctions under Chapter VII as for instance, which was never practiced during the Cold War period, had given a lot of legal perplexities, particularly the three components of that Chapter, namely action with respect to threat to the peace, breaches of the peace, and the last is the primary important, that are acts of aggression. Moreover, on the consideration of the question of ‘war of aggression’ constituting one of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdictions in the drafting of Statute of Rome, had been inconclusive, and no progress had been made. This article, therefore, may contribute to further development of the analysis of the core problem.

Are Sanctions Meant to Work? The Politics of Creating and Implementing Sanctions Through the United Nations

Sanctions, it has often been said, stand between statements and soldiers. In situations where something more than a diplomatic dressing down is required, but where a military response is either inappropriate or impossible, sanctions are frequently turned to as a third option. As a result, sanctions are sometimes used as a default policy option, reflecting the seriousness of the problem rather than the seriousness of engagement with it. (1) As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has stated, sanctions fight has [often] been a less compelling goal than getting sanctions adopted. (2) Do sanctions work? jury remains out on this question, but two preliminary issues bear further examination. What are sanctions intended to achieve? And do states actually want sanctions to work? These essentially political questions depend on two discrete dynamics that are the subject of this article, which focuses largely on sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council. first is the political context of the Council and how the intentions of key actors are channeled into sanctions regimes. second is the political economy in which those sanctions operate. two areas will be examined in turn, followed by an examination of how debate within and without the United Nations might be advanced on these questions. Politics in the Security Council Before 1990, the UN Security Council had imposed mandatory sanctions only twice: the economic blockade of Southern Rhodesia (1966-1979) (3) and the arms embargo on South Africa (1977-1994). (4) During the 1990s--a period David Cortright and George A. Lopez rightly call The Sanctions Decade (5)--mandatory sanctions were imposed against over a dozen states: Iraq and occupied Kuwait, successor states of the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Libya, Liberia, Haiti, Angola (UNITA), Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (in relation to actions in Kosovo), Afghanistan (Taliban regime), and Eritrea and Ethiopia. (6) Sanctions were also employed for a diverse range of purposes ranging from reversing territorial aggression to restoring democratically elected leaders, as well as promoting human rights, deterring and punishing terrorism, promoting disarmament, and bringing belligerents to peace negotiations. As Cortright and Lopez conclude, few instances of sanctions support the view that sanctions alone achieved their goal. In Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Haiti, military force followed the perceived failure of sanctions (or sanctions alone) to change behavior. In Angola, Liberia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone, UN sanctions appear to have had little influence on the use of force by local actors. Only in Libya did sanctions appear to accomplish their objectives without the added ingredient of a military confrontation. (7) sharp increase in the recourse to sanctions appears to have had less to do with a consensus on their utility than with the more general political consensus that emerged within the Council after the Cold War. Even so, sanctions have frequently been controversial. humanitarian crisis in Iraq in the 1990s was the most obvious example--though it was hotly debated whether the crisis could be attributed to the sanctions themselves or domestic governmental choices, the effect was to increase awareness of the humanitarian impact of sanctions and the dangers of imposing general economic sanctions without criteria or a time frame for their removal (see Table 1). This section will examine how the political context of the Council has had concrete effects in the design, implementation, and termination of sanctions regimes. Design Sanctions have been imposed for a wide variety of purposes with varying degrees of success. It is possible, however, to divide sanctions into three broad classes that help to clarify the political context within which they operate. First, sanctions may be intended to compel compliance with international law. …

Debating the Law of Sanctions

After years of United Nations-mandated sanctions against Iraq, human rights advocates began charging the UN Security Council with genocide in its use of 'sanctions of mass destruction'. Following the charges, a full debate began on the law of sanctions. The article recounts this debate, setting it in the context of two earlier rounds of discussion on the lawful use of sanctions. Those earlier debates resulted in general consensus that the Security Council was both free to use sanctions whenever it wanted and that sanctions should be comprehensive, air-tight and subject to enforcement. Sanctions of this description were imposed on Haiti and Iraq, but were soon linked to widespread suffering. The debate among lawyers then turned to how sanctions could or should be limited, perhaps based on human rights law, humanitarian law, or the law governing unilateral sanctions. From this debate the principle of proportionality is emerging as a general limitation on coercion and force in international law. Nevertheless, proportionality cannot eliminate all unintended effects of sanctions. The next iteration of the sanctions debate may well return to when the Security Council may impose sanctions, proportional or not. The impact of United Nations sanctions on Iraq has sparked a worldwide debate on all aspects of sanctions, including their legality. The legal debate continues a long- running discussion among international lawyers on the law of UN sanctions. From the UN Security Council's first imposition of mandatory sanctions, the use of sanctions has been surrounded by legal controversy. The first mandatory use involved sanctions against Rhodesia in 1966. The debate at that time centred on whether the Security Council was acting within its authority under the UN Charter in mandating sanctions in a situation not squarely within the original Charter conception. That debate continued until the end of the Cold War when it faded in preference to a discussion about effectiveness. With the end of the Cold War, the Security Council suddenly became active, imposing nine sanctions regimes in four years. 1 What did the

Dealing With ‘Rogue’ States: Cooperation versus Coercion?

ASIANPERSPECTIVE, Vol. 23, No. 1,1999, pp. 205-214 Book Review Dealing With 'Rogue' States: Cooperation versus Coercion? Leon Sigal, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy With North Korea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) When India and Pakistan's indulged in their bouts of nucle­ ar machismo last year the US response was wholly predictable. Mandatory sanctions were immediately imposed on both states. While this may have made some American members of Congress feel better and conceivably may have deterred other states contemplating going nuclear, the sanctions were an exer­ cise in futility as far as India and Pakistan were concerned. Both states had successfully tested their nuclear weapons and neither planned more explosions. Sanctions - and the hostile American rhetoric that accompanied their imposition - only served to increase popular support for the nuclear programs in both Pak­ istan and India. To many outsiders America's indignation seemed both inconsistent and self-serving. Washington was simultaneously claiming that the handful bombs in South Asian hands were a deadly threat to regional and global stability, while the many thousands of nuclear weapons in American hands were a force for world peace. Critics argued that at best this was gross hypocrisy; at worst racism. Leon Sigal's engaging study, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy With North Korea, says nothing about India or Pak­ istan, yet there are uncanny parallels between the Korean and South Asian nuclear dramas. In each case American inattention and misperception made effective diplomacy difficult if not impossible in the early stages. In each case Washington signally 206 AndrewMack failed to see how its self-righteous rhetoric and blustering served only to infuriate the hyper-nationalist regimes it sought to coerce. In both cases US responses to the crisis were driven by domestic politics in ways which seriously impeded attempts at crisis resolution. The Korean case was also very different, of course. India was a democracy of sorts, Pakistan was an erstwhile American ally; North Korea was a totalitarian enemy. The mainstream conventional wisdom in the US security community in the early 1990s depicted the North as a ruthless, aggressive and irrational 'rogue' state implacably hostile to the US, bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, and willing to cheat on its international obli­ gations to do so. Sigal, by contrast, sees a weak, somewhat para­ noid North Korea, prickly and difficult to deal with to be sure, but prepared to reach an accommodation with Washington and to abandon its nuclear weapons program in return for a package of diplomatic and economic concessions. American security mindsets meant that Pyongyang's signals of willingness to cooperate were either ignored or seen as tricks, while North Korean bluster and threats confirmed Pyongyang's 'rogue' image in American eyes. This in turn dictated what Sigal calls the 'crime and punishment' strategy that Washington used to coerce Pyongyang into giving up its bomb program. 'Rogues' who ruled by terror at home and promoted it abroad were, by definition almost, were simply not amenable to rational persua­ sion; only coercion. In dealing with Pyongyang, denial of high level political contacts and economic assistance, threats of sanctions and even military strikes against the North's nuclear facilities, were the favoured weapons in Washington's diplomatic armoury. Posi­ tive inducements were relegated to the sidelines. The problem was that the coercion approach simply didn't work. By the summer of 1994 a combination of US impatience and North Korean intransigence had brought the Korean penin­ sula to the very brink of war. The antecedents of the crisis went back at least to 1985 when the North started to build a small research reactor at its nuclear facility in Yongbyon. There was nothing particularly suspicious about this. Many countries start their civilian nuclear programs by building research reactors to get practical experience in non­ Dealing With 'Rogue'States 207 military nuclear technologies. The fact that Pyongyang had joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985 was also reassuring. In joining the NPT, the North had undertaken not to make nuclear weapons and had also agreed to admit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors to monitor its nuclear facilities. The main task of the safeguards' inspectors was to ensure that no plutonium - the...

The International Court of Justice and the Security Council: Is there Room for Judicial Control of Decisions of the Political Organs of the United Nations?

Theend of the Cold War and the emergence of a one-superpower world have brought about what one may call the resurrection of the Security Council and a reactivation of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations. Powers of a coercive nature vested by the Charter in the Security Council which for decades seemed like a dead letter have been rediscovered since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The Security Council, which until then had been deadlocked through the threat or use of the veto, has now come alive. Up to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 the Security Council had passed 659 resolutions in its 45 years of existence. In the six years since then it has passed over 400 resolutions. What is more important, however, is that mandatory sanctions, which until 1990 had been ordered only twice—the comprehensive sanctions on Rhodesia and arms embargo on South Africa—have since been used by the Security Council in relation to at least eleven countries. This new and increased activity of the Security Council has provoked debate in recent years as to whether the Council is subject to any limitations when it is acting to maintain or restore international peace and security. The problem has shifted from one of trying to get the Council to work as it was intended, to one of trying to control the work of the Council. In particular there has been renewed interest in the question whether there is any room for judicial control, by the International Court of Justice, of decisions made by the political organs of the United Nations.

The sanctions problem in international economic relations: reflections in the light of recent experience*

Recollected in tranquillity, as an abstract problem in international relations, the continued willingness of governments to employ economic sanctions in international disputes is undoubtedly puzzling. The conventional wisdom, after all, is that they do not work. Since 1945 they have been repeatedly imposed by individual states, by alliances, by regional organizations and by the United Nations itself and in virtually no case have they been unambiguously successful. The standard academic explanation runs roughly as follows: to be effective, sanctions generally require universality of application and a high degree of dependence in the target state; although they raise costs to the target state, the increase is seldom sufficient to purchase compliance and is often greater for the country imposing the sanction; and they frequently have perverse effects, creating out of the siege mentality a sense of national cohesion and determination to triumph in adversity that was previously lacking, while dividing the sanctioning nation within itself and from its allies. Nor is this view confined to the academic community;1 over a period of thirty years West European politicians and officials have regularly employed similar arguments in debating with the United States about the wisdom and the necessity of the strategic embargo against the Soviet Union and its allies. And, in a different context, the United States itself has taken the same line in its resistance to consistent Afro-Asian pressure at the United Nations for the imposition of mandatory sanctions against South Africa. But if scepticism about the utility of sanctions is widespread, it has never acted as a general constraint against their use in particular circumstances. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that in the modern world the standard reaction to a crisis is the imposition of a whole range of economic sanctions and energetic diplomacy to persuade other countries to follow suit. In four recent crises-the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the American hostage crisis in Iran in 1979-80, the imposition of martial law in Poland in December 1981 and the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands in April 1982-the imposition of sanctions and the attempt to concert a common sanctions policy both within Europe and across the Atlantic has played a prominent part in Western diplomacy. In all four cases the sceptical argument was vigorously deployed by interested parties on all sides; in two of them at least, possibly three, it seems likely that, in

Controlling cryptographic publication

Over the last decade, controversy has simmered over the degree to which the U.S. Federal government should control the publication of cryptographic research. The debate is not particularly heated at the present time; researchers seem to be waiting to see the results of a system of voluntary controls recommended last year by a panel of the American Council on Education. Despite the quiet, however, it is instructive to examine some of the history underlying the debate for several reasons beyond sheer curiosity. In the first place, such controls, whether voluntary or mandatory sanctions, could influence the future directions of civilian cryptographic research. Secondly, controversy or confrontation could still arise were a researcher to disagree with the results of the voluntary review. Finally, a recent speech by Admiral Inman, since retired as Deputy Director of the CIA, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science suggests that some in the U.S. Government would like to extend such controls to a much wider range of computer science and engineering research. This article is a brief and personal discussion of the principal components of the controversy by an author who found himself occasionally watching it from the sidelines and in some instances uncomfortably in the middle as an NSF project director responsible for some of the research under debate.