National Implementation of United Nations Sanctions
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| Author | Clara Portela |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070201006500102 |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
| International Journal | Winter 2009-10 | 13 |
Clara Portela is assistant professor of political science at Singapore Management University.
1 Thomas Biersteker, Sue Eckert, Aaron Haelgua, and Peter Romaniuk, “Consensus
from the bottom-up? Assessing the influence of the sanctions reform process,” in
Peter Wallensteen and Carina Staibano, eds., International Sanctions: Between Words
and Wars in the Global System (London: Frank Cass, 2005),15-30.
Clara Portela
National
implementation
of United Nations
sanctions
Towards fragmentation
The implementation of the United Nations security 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
| 14 | Winter 2009-10 | International Journal |
2 Carina Staibano, “Trends in UN sanctions and state capacity: Towards a framework
for national level implementation,” in Wallensteen and Staibano, International
Sanctions, 31. Andrea Charron, meanwhile, has counted 37 voluntary and mandatory
regimes. See Andrea Charron, “UN sanctions in four conflict types,” PhD dissertation,
Royal Military College, Kingston, 2009. Regardless of the number, it is the increase in
the number of regimes that is germane.
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 “targeted” measures. The establishment of targeted
sanctions has been accompanied by other novel developments, such as the
practice of targeting individuals rather than states. 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 a
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 a brief
introduction to the transformations in sanctions as a 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 a number of legal cases
in Europe.
THE UN SANCTIONS LANDSCAPE AND ITS POST-COLD WAR MUTATIONS
The use of sanctions by the UN security council increased significantly in
the aftermath of the Cold War. While the security 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
| Clara Portela |
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