Nations Sanctions Research Articles

Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq

In 1999 UNICEF, in cooperation with the government of Iraq and the local authorities in the "autonomous" (northern Kurdish) region, conducted two similar surveys to provide regionally representative and reliable estimates of child mortality (the subject of this paper) and maternal mortality. In a cross-sectional household survey in the south/centre of Iraq in February and March, 1999, 23105 ever-married women aged 15-49 years living in sampled households were interviewed by trained interviewers with a structured questionnaire that was developed using the Demographic and Health Surveys questionnaire and following a pre-test. In a similar survey in the autonomous region in April and May 14 035 ever-married women age 15-49 were interviewed. In the south/centre, infant and under-5 mortality increased during the 10 years before the survey, which roughly corresponds to the period following the Gulf conflict and the start of the United Nations sanctions. Infant mortality rose from 47 per 1000 live births during 1984-89 to 108 per 1000 in 1994-99, and under-5 mortality rose from 56 to 131 per 1000 live births. In the autonomous region during the same period, infant mortality declined from 64 to 59 per 1000 and under-5 mortality fell from 80 to 72 per 1000. Childhood mortality was higher among children born in rural areas, children born to women with no education, and in boys, and these differentials were broadly similar in the two regions. Childhood mortality clearly increased after the Gulf conflict and under UN sanctions in the south/centre of Iraq, but in the autonomous region since the start of the Oil-for-Food Programme childhood mortality has begun to decline. Better food and resource allocation to the autonomous region contributed to the continued gains in lower mortality, whereas the situation in the south/centre deteriorated despite the high level of literacy in that region.

United Nations sanctions: Lessons of experience

Despite the apparent virtues of UN sanctions in terms of legitimacy and universality, attention in recent years has focused on their questionable achievements and adverse consequences. In particular, the cost of imposing sanctions is unevenly spread, while comprehensive measures harm the civilian population in the target and spare those responsible for the offending policies. This article discusses the merits of UN sanctions in the context of the membership and practice of the Security Council and looks closely at flaws in sanctions programmes and in their administration. Experience suggests careful review of alternative means of pressure as well as reform of existing procedures.

Sanctions: Some Simple Analytics

Governments often seek influence beyond their borders. One way is through what Thomas Schelling (1960, 1966) calls brute force, taking direct physical control. Less extreme methods are to promise rewards for taking desired actions, or to threaten punishments for not carrying them out-sanctions. Sanctions involve two parties, the sender and the target. (To help identify pronouns' antecedents, we consider a feminine sender and masculine target.) The sender's objective is to influence the target by threatening to impose some measure against him for acting contrary to her interest. Sanctions have long been important in international relations. Athens imposed a trade embargo against Megara, ultimately setting off the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). Sanctions are central to such international agreements as the United Nations Charter, the World Trade Organization, and the Montreal Protocol governing chlorofluorocarbons. U.S. law prescribes the use of sanctions in circumstances related, for example, to national security, human rights, intellectual property, and international trade.' Do sanctions actually achieve senders' objectives? A common claim is that they usually fail and are costly to senders. Recent U.S. legislation proposes to limit unilateral U.S. sanctions (except trade-related ones), on the grounds that they cost more than they are worth. History provides examples of sanctions that were costly and ineffectual, such as the League of Nations sanctions against the Italian occupation of Abyssinia, or U.S. sanctions against Cuba. United Nations sanctions against Iraq remain in place, having achieved less than full success, to say the least (see Gary Hufbauer et al., 1990). More systematic studies suggest that sanctions often do succeed, particularly when objectives are modest. Hufbauer et al. (1990) examine 116 episodes of sanctions with military or political objectives, deeming about one-third successful. Sanctions imposed under U.S. trade law have worked even better, about three-fourths of the time (see e.g., Sykes, 1992; Thomas Bayard and Kimberly A. Elliott, 1994; Elliott and J. David Richardson, 1997). Here we develop a simple framework to explain how sanctions can worl, and what is required for them to succeed. Our framework exploits advances in the theory of repeated games and bargaining under incomplete information. While a game-theorist would recognize the flavor of our results, the setting here is a fresh one.2 We find success more likely when the threatened measure costs the sender little relative to the gain from modifying the target's behavior, while the damage to the target is large relative to his cost of complying with the sender's will-results consistent with both intuition and empirical evidence (as well as with Adam Smith [1776 Book IV, Ch. I]). Moreover, a more patient sender is more likely to succeed, while the target's patience can work to the sender's disadvantage.3

“Can Two Walk Together, Except They Be Agreed?” The Relationship Between International Law and European Law: The Incorporation of United Nations Sanctions Against Yugoslavia Into European

“Can Two Walk Together, Except They Be Agreed?” The Relationship Between International Law and European Law: The Incorporation of United Nations Sanctions Against Yugoslavia Into European

On creating a united nations sanctions agency

This article proposes the establishment of a United Nations Sanctions Agency (UNSA) under the auspices of, and reporting to, the UN Security Council. The proposal expands on recent calls made by then UN Secretary‐General Boutros Boutros‐Ghali for a ‘mechanism’ to better assist the organization in managing UN sanctions policy, operations, monitoring and enforcement. While many obstacles admittedly exist to creating a UN Sanctions Agency, and it is a contentious proposal, the writer argues that it is nevertheless important to international relations theory and practice, since UN sanctions appear to be increasing in frequency as they undergird many of the Security Council's contemporary enforcement actions. Moreover, in cases of economic sanctions, institutions appear to be one of the most powerful mechanisms for overcoming collective‐action problems.

Legal Problems at the Centre of United Nations Sanctions

Legal Problems at the Centre of United Nations Sanctions

Fighting for survival.

The political crisis in Haiti has had a severe impact on the health of the population. Mortality among Haitians is 13 per 1000, much higher than the Latin American rate of seven per 1000, and the incidence of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malnourishment is increasing among children. Although food and medicine are exempt, United Nations sanctions have had a negative impact on most of the population. In particular the embargo on fuel has limited most people's access to health care. The difficulties of distributing aid and health care without softening the embargo on fuel are immense, and the health of Haitians is not likely to improve until the political crisis is resolved.

The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and Israel, 1957–68

On 20 February 1957, a grim-faced Dwight D. Eisenhower told a national television audience that America would support United Nations sanctions unless Israel pulled out of Gaza and all other Egyptian territory seized during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Stunned by this diplomatic thunderbolt, the Israelis quickly agreed to withdraw their forces. Yet ten years later, when a preemptive war against the Arabs brought Israel not only Gaza but also Jordan's West Bank and Syria's Golan Heights, the United States acquiesced. For two decades, this reversal of U.S. policy has usually been regarded as the handiwork of one man—Lyndon B. Johnson. Observers as diverse as Edward Tivnan, Cheryl Rubenberg, and I. L. Kenen, for example, have contended that Washington's tilt toward Tel Aviv during the mid-1960s stemmed in large measure from deepening ties between the Johnson White House and what many have come to call “the Israel lobby.” Scholars such as Ethan Nadelmann and William Quandt, on the other hand, have downplayed Johnson's preoccupation with interest-group politics and emphasized instead his admiration for Israel's muscular doctrine of self-defense. Rare is the author who, like Donald Neff, has been able to capture the blend of domestic and diplomatic considerations that prompted Johnson to cement the special relationship with Israel. Rarer still is someone like Steven Spiegel, who has linked Johnson's pro-Israel policies to initiatives launched by his two predecessors in the Oval Office.

Local Autonomy in a Franchise Age: Structural Change in National Voluntary Associations

Many national voluntary associations seem to be evolving toward franchise-like systems in which national headquarters sanctions and controls the operations of local affiliates. This paper identifies feder ated movements as the type of association whose participants are especially concerned about the evolution toward the franchise model. The environmental factors and organizational dynamics that pro mote central direction and standardization are identified, and the issues facing these associations in attempting to balance the benefits of central initiative and local autonomy are framed.

Book Review: The Politics of United Nations Sanctions

Book Review: The Politics of United Nations Sanctions

Strategies of Economic Containment: U.S. Trade Relations with the Soviet Union

If a consensus exists in the literature on international economic sanctions, it is that attempts to use economic instruments to achieve political objectives are likely to fail.1This widely shared conclusion has been based on the analysis of a number of highly visible but unsuccessful attempts, including the League of Nations' sanctions against Italy in 1935–1936, the Arab boycott of Israel, U.S. sanctions against the Castro regime, United Nations sanctions against Rhodesia, and most recently, U.S. sanctions against the Soviet Union following the invasion of Afghanistan and the imposition of martial law in Poland.

The Nuclear Connection: A Reassessment of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Proliferation

This book presents papers on nuclear power. Topics considered include prospects for commercial nuclear power and proliferation, the front end of the fuel cycle, the back end of the fuel cycle, national policy issues, non-proliferation policy, safeguards, controls, sanctions, and nuclear energy and proliferation (a longer perspective).

Oil and Food as International Sanctions

It hardly needs to be stated that the practice of denying food and warmth to an enemy is as old as history. Sieges to force capitulation have been known since the earliest times, and in our own century both world wars produced extensive and intensive efforts to cut off the opposing side from basic necessities of life by bombing, submarine warfare to destroy merchant shipping, and naval blockade. For industrialized countries like Britain and Japan, who were heavily dependent on imported food and raw materials, security of supply was a life and death matter. Interruption of normal trade relations can also be deliberate government policy to inflict punishment in times of peace, and this paper focusses on the possible use of oil and food as international sanctions as an alternative rather than as a supplement to the use of force. In the consideration of economic measures as alternatives to the use of force in the repertoire of League of Nations and United Nations sanctions, denial of strategic minerals and particularly oil has been seen as a key factor in limiting an aggressor's war-making capability. Food sanctions however have not featured prominently in this debate. To deprive people of food, and perhaps starve them to death, is arguably an inappropriate penalty to be imposed by an international body concerned with governmental failure to maintain international standards. Nor did food as a commodity entering into international trade have obvious utility as a 'weapon* for collective use.

The United Nations and Economic Sanctions against Rhodesia

The United Nations and Economic Sanctions against Rhodesia

Testimony on Rhodesia and United States Foreign Policy

I appreciate very much this opportunity to present our views on what the United States should do to encourage political progress in Rhodesia.Since the establishment of the Washington Office on Africa in the fall of 1972, we have devoted much of our efforts to working with sympathetic members of Congress and citizens across the country to improve United States policy toward Rhodesia and specifically to repeal the Byrd Amendment, which three-and-a-half years ago created a statutory violation of this country’s treaty obligation to comply with the United Nations sanctions program. So we are pleased to participate in hearings on southern Africa and especially this one on Rhodesia.

The British General Election of 1935

Historians have so far been in disarray over the British general election held in 1935. On the part played by rearmament in the National Government's campaign two eminent scholars held diametrically opposed views in the immediate post-war years, while another thought that the Government emphasized collective security, in the form of League of Nations sanctions against Italy for her invasion of Ethiopia, at the expense of rearmament.1 One scholar maintained that the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, had sought a mandate for increased armaments expenditure, and was answered by another who wrote that the Government's economic record

The U.S. Congress and the Rhodesian Chrome Issue

The passage of legislation late in 1971 which in effect caused the United States unilaterally to breach the United Nations sanctions against Southern Rhodesia surely constitutes one of the most shameful episodes in the recent conduct of our country's international affairs. One commentator quite correctly did not mince words in describing the action as a “chrome-plated treaty violation.” And yet, even today, it is doubtful whether any great numbers of American citizens realize that their government has broken its treaty obligations to an international institution which our country did most to initiate and to promote until very recent times. An especially saddening aspect of the affair is the fact that an Administration which rightly has condemned and often contested growing neo-isolationist sentiment in our society's outlook on the world scarcely lifted a finger to prevent precisely the kind of result it decried.

The Resurrection of Neutrality in Europe

The collapse of the League of Nations as an instrument of collective security has called forth a series of politico-legal reactions, of which perhaps the most symptomatic of the crisis in the international order is the new neutrality policy of the small European states. This new policy was prompted by the collapse of the League of Nations sanctions against Italy. After withdrawal from the League had been seriously discussed in some of the small European states, and just before the lifting of the sanctions against Italy by the League, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland published a joint declaration, on July 1, 1936, containing in a veiled form a cancellation of the obligations under Article 16 of the Covenant of the League.