UN Sanctions and Conflict

Responding to Peace and Security Threats

Andrea Charron

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136662966
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the application of the UN Security Council's mandatory sanctions since 1946, and, in particular, the regimes adopted for specific types of conflict.

Beginning in the Cold War period with South Africa and Southern Rhodesia and continuing today, following the post-9/11 experience with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, sanctions are a key tool in the UN's efforts to deal with conflict. This book argues that the type of threat greatly influences the types of sanctions measures applied by the Security Council, who is targeted, as well as the objectives tied to the sanctions. The question of sanctions application is approached by classifying all 29 mandatory Security Council sanctions regimes into four conflict types: interstate; intrastate; international norm-breaking states; and support to terrorism. All of the sanctions regimes within each conflict type are analysed for: the objectives sought by the Council through the application of sanctions measures the targets chosen what measures are applied and in what sequence compared to other Security Council tools (such as peacekeeping missions or peace negotiations). The book sheds new light on how the Security Council approaches international peace and security beyond the application of force. Offering an excellent summary of the ins-and-outs of UN sanctions, and useful summary tables of UN sanctions regimes by conflict type, this book will be of great interest to students of international organisations, peace and conflict studies, conflict resolution, security studies and international relations or politics in general.

1 Setting the context

The United Nations (UN) Security Council (hereafter referred to as the Council) is arguably the most powerful organ in the world. It is charged with addressing all manner of threats to and breaches of international peace and security on behalf of member states. This 15-member panel made up of 5 permanent state members (or the P5, which includes China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and ten elected state members has a variety of tools from which to draw. Two are often applied to deal with international conflicts: UN missions and sanctions. Much has been written about peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions employed by the Council to tackle conflicts in the world and there is also a wealth of academic literature available on sanctions (including by Doxey, Hufbauer et al., Cortright and Lopez etc.). But whereas studies of the application of armed force have the conflict at the centre of the discussion, sanctions research usually focuses on the tool, not the context. Therefore, the question of whether the Council adopts different sanctions measures for particular categories of threats to international peace and security has yet to be answered. Put another way, does the Council tailor sanctions to ‘suit’ the conflict in question or does the conflict dictate the sanctions to be applied? The answer is a bit of both.

This book is about the tool the Council¹ applies most often to address conflicts, i.e. sanctions. It is also about four different categories of threats to international peace and security: 1) armed conflict between states; 2) armed conflict within states; 3) international norm-breaking states (the so-called ‘rogues’); and 4) international terrorism. Each of the subsequent four chapters in this book is dedicated to one of these conflict types and the sanctions applied. The sixth and final chapter examines the ‘so what’ question: what have we learned about sanctions and the Council by using the conflict type as the lens of analysis? The answer is a more nuanced understanding of this tool called UN mandatory sanctions as well as the Council's approach to dealing with conflict. The Council is more creative and logical about its application of sanctions and approach to conflicts than is often suggested. But first, we must establish what sanctions are and when they are applied to be able to see how they are linked.

What are UN sanctions?

Sanctions have a ‘know-it-when-you-see-it’ quality, but that does not mean they are easily defined. Sanctions are often thought of as one, homogeneous tool rather than a category of very different measures that can be applied in very different ways. Not only must one consider who is doing the sanctioning (the senders), but who is being sanctioned (the target), what is being restricted (the measures) and what are the objectives of the Council.

When faced with a conflict, the Council has five options. The first is to do nothing. The second is for the Council to recommend peaceful methods of dispute settlement as outlined in Chapter VI of the Charter (for example, the Council may recommend negotiations or arbitration or investigate the dispute). The final three options are special because they all fall within Chapter VII of the Charter that encompasses actions only the Council may decide be taken with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. Once the Council has decided that a crisis is of such a nature that it damages or endangers international peace and security under Article 39, the Council may:

1 invoke Article 40 and call upon the parties concerned to comply with provisional measures the Council deems necessary; and/or

2 invoke Article 41 and adopt measures ‘short of force'; and/or

3 invoke Article 42 and apply measures that include the application of armed force.

Measures adopted by the Council under Article 41 – or measures short of force – are often referred to as sanctions. Article 41 reads:

The Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.

(Article 41, Charter of the UN)

While there is no reference to the term ‘sanctions’ in the Charter, Article 41 is commonly referred to as the sanctions article. So what parameters are provided in Article 41 that gives us a better understanding as to what constitutes sanctions? The drafters of the UN Charter were very careful not to be too prescriptive, thus potentially binding the Council to narrow choices. The only parameters that must be respected are:

1 that the Council may decide on the measures applied;

2 that the measures cannot involve force;

3 that it is members of the UN (and therefore states) that must do the sanctioning²; and

4 that an interruption to or the severance of services or relations are appropriate examples.

This means that any measures consistent with international law (i.e. the Council cannot require member states to commit genocide or piracy, which are widely understood as being against international law)³ and that respect the aforementioned four parameters constitute ‘sanctions’. Options are limited only by the imagination of the Council and the requisite number of votes (9 ‘yes’ votes out of 15 and no vetoes by a member of the P5). Therefore:

1 Who or what may be sanctioned is unlimited. It could be a state, or an individual or an entity (like a bank or company) or a combination of all three. Who is targeted could change too (i.e. the Council could begin by targeting a state and change to targeting only specific individuals or vice versa).

2 What specific commodities should be ‘interrupted’ is unlimited. It could be weapons, natural resources, furniture, fish, airplane parts, oil – anything that the target needs to either import, or conversely, could export.

3 There are no restrictions on how many sanctions are applied or how devastating the sanctions are. All commodities to the target could be banned indefinitely, some for specific periods, or sanctions can be suspended, terminated and/or reapplied.

4 What specific relations should be severed is not specified either. Diplomats may be recalled or foreign offices may be closed, even state-operated airline offices can be closed. The Council can also call on member states to stop radios from transmitting or even prevent athletes from competing in international competitions or prevent specific states from hosting international meetings or events.

The drafters of the UN Charter were heavily influenced by the experience of the League of Nations created after World War I (WWI). It was of paramount importance to the creators of the UN that war between nations be stopped with powerful, immediate and universal measures – otherwise interstate wars could turn into world wars far too easily. Therefore, the measures to stop war were to be of such a magnitude that they deterred future wars as well. The measure of choice in those days was the economic boycott (Foley 1923: 71–72). The ‘sanctions’ article for the League of Nations read:

Should any Member of the League resort to war . . . it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war against all other Members of the League, which hereby undertake immediately to subject it to the severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse between their nationals and the nationals of the covenant-breaking State, and the prevention of all financial, commercial or personal intercourse between the nationals of the covenant-breaking State and the nationals of any other State, whether a Member of the League or not.

(Article 16[1], Covenant of the League of Nations)

The difference with the UN was that the League's definition of sanctions, while still not using the term specifically, was much stricter. For example, only war between states constituted grounds for sanctions and the severance of trade and relations against a state should be total and punishing. At the same time (and perhaps antithetical to the spirit of Article 16), it was up to each member state to decide if sanctions were warranted rather than as determined by the League's Council as is the case for the UN. In theory then:

[The Covenant] invest[ed] the League with an authority which the medieval Popes, even in their palmist days, could not, or dared not, claim. Article 16 places the transgressor outside the pale of civilization. It imposes a ruthless boycott and blockage. It prohibits even personal intercourse with the citizens of the transgressor states.

(Sarolé a 1939:59)

In practice, the League's experience with sanctions was underwhelming to say the least. The terrible weapon of sanctions was unable to stop the invasion of Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) by Italy in 1935. In this case, the application of sanctions failed spectacularly requiring the League to capitulate and accept the annexation of Abyssinia by Italy. This and other failures, including the onset of WWII, resulted in the dissolution of the League.

Despite the chequered history of the League with sanctions it was never a question that sanctions would not be included as one of the coercive tools to address international peace and security by the Council. The drafters of the Charter realized that sanctions were still a potentially effective tool to maintain peace and stability, but that some procedural and political problems would need to be addressed. Consequently, the drafters of the Charter were careful not to prescribe the type of situations for which sanctions should be applied (i.e. events other than ‘war’ qualified for such attention) thus permitting the Council to apply sanctions in many different contexts. Also, the drafters provided only loose guidelines as to what types of sanctions could be employed so as not to predetermine the measures applied – the ‘severance of all trade or financial relations', for example, was just one of a range of possibilities. Most importantly, the Council would decide which situations warranted sanctions rather than leaving it to individual member states to determine the existence of a threat to or breach of the peace. And the Council would dictate the concomitant measures to be applied by member states rather than waiting for a system of committees to provide proposals and recommendations.⁴ By centralizing decision-making in the Council, it was made a more powerful organ, thus maximizing the coerciveness and flexibility of the tools it applied. Consequently, sanctions were billed by the drafters of the Charter as one of the most important tools in the Council's toolbox. Nothing, however, could prepare the world for the range of conflicts addressed by the Council or the inventiveness of the Council in its application of Article 41 measures. Today, UN sanctions are applied to address a whole host of conflicts with a range of sanctions measures. Indeed the least likely of scenarios in the 2000s is the application of sanctions to address an interstate conflict – no less than the initial raison d'ätre for the creation of the UN.

The Cold War

Sanctions are not new – they have been applied by kings to impose order, by warring armies to blockade cities and by individual states or groups of states to protest particular actions (for example, western states sanctioned Russia for its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979). But whereas these cases treated sanctions more as a tool of punishment, the Council has applied sanctions in very different ways. Beginning in the Cold War, the first case of mandatory UN s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Setting the context
• Interstate conflicts
• Intrastate conflicts
• International norm-breaking states
• Terrorism
• Conclusion: the art of tailoring
• Appendix A: Interstate UN sanctions regimes summary
• Appendix B: Intrastate UN sanction regimes summary
• Appendix C: Norm-breakers UN sanctions regimes summary
• Appendix D: Terrorism sanctions regimes summary
• Appendix E: Elected non-permanent members of the Security Council
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index