Debating the Law of Sanctions

Abstract

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.