United Nations Security Council Sanctions Research Articles

Unilateral Sanctions under International Law and Effectiveness of Blocking

INTRODUCTION. This article discusses modern international legal concept of unilateral sanctions. The authors contribute to the emerging discussion on the qualifying of unilateral sanctions under international law.MATERIALS AND METHODS. In this study we took into account the works of both Russian and foreign scholars in the field of international economic law, as well as analyzed documents and materials of international organizations (United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO) and others) in order to assess the compatibility of unilateral sanctions with international law. General scientific methods of cognition (analysis, synthesis, induction, and deduction), special legal methods (formal-legal, technical-legal, method of legal analogy) and comparative legal method were used in the presented research.RESEARCH RESULTS. Presented analysis has shown that widely used term “unilateral sanctions” leads to abusive and inappropriate use of international legal term. Analysis of compatibility of unilateral sanctions with other types of coercive measures such as countermeasures, UN Security Council sanctions, retortions, reprisals have shown that unilateral sanctions do not fall under the meaning of all mentioned measures. In addition, unilateral sanctions should not be justified under the WTO security exceptions. The use of extraterritorial unilateral sanctions contradicts one of the fundamental principles of international law – principle of non-interference in internal affairs. Existing blocking unilateral sanctions mechanisms are not efficient enough to compensate negative effect posed by unilateral sanctions.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. Authors concluded that unilateral sanctions in most of the cases do not satisfy cumulative criteria of legitimate countermeasure. Unilateral sanctions are not equivalent to the United Nation Security Council sanctions, as there are no “checks and balances” in the decision-making process in the form of determining the degree of threat to peace and security and taking into account humanitarian exceptions. Although there is some correlation between unilateral sanctions and retortions or reprisals, retortions and reprisals posses criteria of legality and proportionality, while, unilateral sanctions are introduced at the state’s discretion without any standard. Furthermore, the authors argue that to avoid abusive use of the WTO security exceptions WTO panels have to rely on the well-balanced approach used by the Panel in Russia – Transit case. This approach shows that the context of security exception should be understood as encompassing only military and closely related to military issues and does not cover political, economic, cultural or any other interests and relations. Existing blocking mechanisms of unilateral sanctions require separate qualification under international law including compatibility with the legitimate countermeasures.

When United Nations Sanctions Impact International Financial Governance: Lessons from the Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund

This article examines the interaction between United Nations Security Council sanctions and the transnational governance of sovereign wealth funds through the lens of the experience of the Libyan Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of Libya. The fund is a member of the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds, a group of sovereign wealth funds whose members endorse the Santiago Principles, a set of guiding principles aimed at improving the governance, independence, and transparency of such entities. In early 2011, the United Nations Security Council requested States to freeze the assets of the Libyan Investment Authority because of their potential utility to then Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, as a source of funding for his regime, which was engaged in a civil war with rebel forces. These assets remain frozen, seven years after Gaddafi’s death in October 2011. This article critically analyzes the establishment and governance of the Libyan Investment Authority, and the impact of the continued sanctions on its assets. The article questions the contemporary validity of the narrative summary of reasons provided by the Libya Sanctions Committee for the fund’s present listing, arguing instead that the latter stems from the threat of potential misappropriation as a result of governance issues. The article proposes that engagement by the fund with international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds and adherence to the Santiago Principles are vital for its better governance and could equally help to address longstanding problems related to transparency and risk management. At the same time, such institutional engagement will help the fund to meet its objectives as laid out in its constituent law and to operate for the benefit of the people of Libya, for whom it was established.

Chaos in South Sudan: From Efforts to Peace until United Nations Security Council Sanctions

Chaos in South Sudan: From Efforts to Peace until United Nations Security Council Sanctions

Economic Consequences of the United Nations Security Council Sanctions against North Korea on Targeted and Untargeted Sectors

Economic Consequences of the United Nations Security Council Sanctions against North Korea on Targeted and Untargeted Sectors

EMERGING POWERS AND PEACE NEGOTIATIONS: THE EXPERIENCE OF BRAZIL IN THE NUCLEAR TALKS WITH IRAN

This paper addresses the role of emerging powers and the importance of Southern soft power resources in global peace negotiations. It aims to examine the performance of Brazil as a contributor to peaceful solutions and the de-escalation of international security tension. Brazilian assertive diplomacy during the Lula da Silva government (2003-2010) made special efforts to build bridges in international negotiations to transcend deadlock scenarios. This text will focus specifically on the 2010 Brazil-Turkey joint initiative – known as the Teheran Declaration – set forward to mitigate the international tensions caused by the Iranian nuclear program. Both countries worked together to persuade Iran to accept a fuel swap deal which could de-rail a new round of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran. The failure to change the course of Western-led coercive actions indicates the restraints emerging powers face as peace intermediators in global security. The lack of acknowledgement from Western powers, while effective to reverse the success of the Brazilian-Turkey initiative, also postponed positive outcomes in international negotiations with Iran. This text suggests re-visiting the consequences of this postponement, particularly after the Trump administration has walked away from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran.

Conflict diamonds and the Angolan Civil War (1992–2002)

In the early 1990s several rebel groups turned to natural resource extraction to pay for war. A key form of this is rebel diamond production, commonly referred to as conflict diamonds, which is widely perceived as being highly beneficial to insurgent organisations. Yet in the Angolan Civil War (1992–2002), the use of conflict diamonds by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) resulted in a decisive insurgent defeat. How can this outcome be explained? Offering a nuanced understanding of how conflict diamonds affect civil war, this article shows that although diamonds generated considerable revenue for UNITA, they were not an effective method for them to take on the Angolan government. This was for two reasons: internally, the rebels greatly struggled to convert their diamond proceeds into sufficient goods and services; and externally, it left the group highly vulnerable to international countermeasures in the form of United Nations Security Council sanctions. Natural resource extraction may therefore not be as useful to rebel groups as is frequently believed.

Sino-Iranian Asymmetrical Interdependence in Light of the Iran Nuclear Issue

This article studies how the asymmetrically interdependent Sino-Iranian relationship evolved in light of two major events that both introduced a new phase of the Iran Nuclear Issue: the implementation of the US, EU and UN sanctions on Iran (2010), and the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (2016). Specifically, it answers the research question: How did the asymmetrically interdependent relationship between Iran and China developed during the three phases of the Iran Nuclear Issue: the pre-sanctions period (2004–2010), the sanctions period (2010 to January 2016), and the period after the implementation of the JCPOA (2016 and 2017)? It provides Keohane and Nye’s definition of asymmetrical interdependence, and uses this definition of asymmetrical interdependence as an analytical tool to select three major areas of connectivity in the Sino-Iranian relationship. These are [1] Commercial Ties, consisting of [1a] Energy Ties, [1b]; Military Cooperation (i.e., arms trade), and, [1c] EU-Iranian Trade as a percentage of Sino-Iranian trade, [2] Technological Comparative Advantage, Assistance, and Cooperation consisting of [2a] Infrastructure, and [2b] Technology, and [3] Additional Strategic Value, which consists of subsections [3a] Additional Strategic Assets, and [3b] Ideological Value. By means of analysis of these categories, this article concludes that, overall, in the period after the 2010 United States, European Union and United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran came into effect (2011–2015), Iran was more asymmetrically dependent on China than it had been before this event (2004–2010). Nevertheless, this surplus of asymmetrical dependence on China has decreased significantly because of the implementation of the JCPOA (2016–2017).

A Modest Memo

A Modest Memo is a satire in the form of a legal memo written for President-Elect Donald Trump circa November 2016. It counsels Mr. Trump to obtain Mexican funding for a United States-Mexico “Wall” via United Nations Security Council sanctions. These sanctions would freeze remittances (that is, “hold them hostage”) until Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto wired the United States sufficient monies for construction. The memo, which is entirely the product of my imagination and legal study, contemplates one of the many possible worst case scenarios threatened by the Trump presidency. Through the arts of law and literature, I aim to show how the rule of law may so easily buckle and splinter beneath the increasing tide of United States, as well as global, nationalism and racism. I take inspiration, of course, from Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729), as well as the legal-literary experiments found in Derrick Bell’s Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1993) and Richard Delgado’s Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative, 87 Mich. L. Rev. 2411 (1989).

The United Nations Security Council Sanctions and International Human Rights

Abstract This article assesses whether the United Nations Security Council must respect human rights under international law when acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. It argues that the Security Council has to respect human rights enshrined in those human rights treaties drawn up under the United Nations’ auspices and in non-peremptory customary international law, when this is not incompatible with the Security Council’s objective of maintaining or restoring international peace and security. The analysis also argues however that the Security Council must comply with peremptory international human rights, with no exception. The paper concludes that Chapter VII action by the Security Council is limited only to a small extent by international human rights standards.

The enforcement problem in Resolution 2094 and the United Nations Security Council sanctions regime: sanctioning North Korea

ABSTRACTThis article deconstructs United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2094 through the preambulatory statements, objectives, obligations, and implementation and enforcement provisions of UNSC Resolution 2094. The article proceeds in three parts. First, it reviews the academic literature on UNSC sanctions and their application in the North Korean case. Second, it deconstructs UNSC Resolution 2094 according to the common structural components of international legal instruments to assess the level of congruence between the objectives of UNSC Resolution 2094, its enforcement mechanisms and outcomes. Third, it explores the weaknesses of UNSC Resolution 2094, focusing on the gap between the objectives and enforcement mechanisms found in the resolution. The inability of the UNSC sanctions regime to prevent North Korea reaching the cusp of becoming a nuclear weapons power is evidence of the international community's weak leverage over Pyongyang, a situation arising from the vulnerability of South Korea to a North Korean attack and the cross-cutting strategic priorities of China; the absence of economic linkages between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the primary sanctions-sender state in the USA; and North Korea's commitment to a nuclear weapons capability as the foundation of its medium-term economic development strategy, its institutional governance structure and associated ideological commitments.

From Kadi to Nada: Judicial Techniques Favouring Human Rights over United Nations Security Council Sanctions

This contribution analyses the implications of the Kadi decision of the European Court of Justice of July 2013 and the Nada decision of the European Court of Human Rights of September 2013. Both decisions have given preference to human rights standards over United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions stemming from the Resolution 1267 (1999) sanctions regime. However, they used very different techniques in coming to similar results, with implications for the effective enforcement of UNSC binding decisions and the unity of international law.

From Kadi to Nada: Judicial Techniques Favoring Human Rights Over United Nations Security Council Sanctions

The contribution analyzes the implications of the Kadi decision of the European Court of Justice of 18 July 2013, as well as that of the Nada decision of the European Court of Human Rights of September 2013. Both decisions have given preference to human rights standards over United Nations Security Council sanctions stemming from the Resolution 1267 (1999) sanctions regime. However, they used very different techniques in coming to similar results, with implications for the effective enforcement of UNSC binding decisions and the unity of international law.

Iran: sanctions halt long-range ballistic-missile development

Financial sanctions and oil embargoes imposed since December 2011 by the United States and European Union respectively have tightened the economic pressure on Iran and, along with United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed in June 2010, could yet deal a knock-out blow to the country's development of long-range ballistic missiles.

Immunity in Hong Kong for Kleptocrats and Human Rights Violators

The Court of Final Appeal’s decision in Congo v FG Hemisphere has significant human rights implications beyond the borders of Hong Kong. Current and former heads of state wanted for crimes against humanity or grand corruption can rest assured that the Hong Kong court will not strip them of immunity from prosecution like the House of Lords did in the case concerning General Augusto Pinochet. Former leaders need only worry that the immunity has not been waived by the new rulers. Stolen state assets are also safe in Hong Kong, subject only to waiver of immunity and United Nations Security Council sanctions which China has allowed Hong Kong to implement and enforce.