Evaluating UN Sanctions
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| Author | Andrea Charron,Jane Boulden |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070201006500101 |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Guest-Editors' IntroductionArticle |
| International Journal | Winter 2009-10 | 1 |
Jane Boulden holds a Canada Research Chair in international relations and security studies
at the Royal Military College of Canada. Andrea Charron is the SSHRC postdoc fellow
at the NPSIA at Carleton University. They would like to thank Margaret Doxey, “dean
of sanctions,” for her guidance and expert advice on this and many other projects, and
Rima Berns-McGown for her patience and helpfulness. The workshop that led to this issue
was made possible by a generous SSHRC “aid to research workshops and conferences in
Canada” grant.
1 The “sanctions decade” is also the title of an important book on UN sanctions. See
David Cortright and George A. Lopez, The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Strategies in
the 1990s (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
Jane Boulden & Andrea Charron
Evaluating UN
sanctions
New ground, new dilemmas, and unintended consequences
Nothing provokes a debate like UN sanctions; there seems to be an instant
polarizing quality to the topic. In the post-Cold War era, sanctions have
become a key security council tool in responding to international peace and
security situations. Sanctions are applied not just to stop hostilities, but to
improve governance, protect natural resources, promote democracy, and
decry abhorrent practices such as the use of child soldiers or the incitement
to violence and hatred. The “sanctions decade” of the 1990s witnessed an
86-fold increase in the number of UN sanctions regimes employed, making
sanctions the security council’s most important and most used coercive
tool.1 Twenty-three mandatory regimes have been created since 1990; 12 are
GUEST-EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
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