*{Global Policy Forum - Sanctions: An Analysis 
Sanctions: An Analysis
By James A. Paul and Senwan Akhtar 
Global Policy Forum
August, 1998}


*partie=titre SANCTIONS TO ENFORCE INTERNATIONAL LAW *partie=nil  
Most people consider sanctions a peaceful and effective means to enforce 
international law. Under Article 41 of the UN Charter, the Security Council 
may call on Member States "to apply measures not involving the use of armed 
force to give effect to its decisions." Typically, sanctions cut off trade and 
investments, preventing a target country from buying or selling goods in the 
global marketplace. Sanctions may aim at particular items like arms or oil. 
They may cut off air traffic, suspend or drastically curtail diplomatic 
relations, block movement of persons, bar investments, or freeze international 
bank deposits. 

Sanctions enjoy a good reputation that many now question. Increasingly, 
critics charge that sanctions are cruel, unfair and even violent. 
International law has developed no standards on which sanctions can be based 
or the destructive impact of sanctions limited. Ironically, then, sanctions 
are used to enforce law, but themselves are outside of the law.
 
*partie=titre PROBLEMS WITH CURRENT SANCTIONS POLICIES
Suffering of the Innocent *partie=nil  
Sanctions impose hardship by affecting ordinary people far more than leaders. 
In Supplement to An Agenda for Peace , published in January 1995, Secretary 
General Boutros Ghali called sanctions "a blunt instrument." "They raise the 
ethical question of whether suffering inflicted on vulnerable groups in the 
target country is a legitimate means of exerting pressure on political leaders 
whose behavior is unlikely to be affected by the plight of their subjects." In 
a Security Council debate on January 19, 1995, Ambassador Nihal Rodrigo of Sri 
Lanka concurred, saying that decisions must take better account of the 
sanctions' impact on ordinary people and must seek to avoid the "suffering of 
the innocent." 

As evidence has accumulated on the harsh effects of sanctions, particularly in 
Iraq, experts have increasingly recognized this negative side of sanctions and 
questioned whether human suffering can be justified by the original purpose. 
The critics of sanctions found a powerful ally in the International Red Cross, 
a highly respected and traditionally non-political body. In its 1995 World 
Disasters Report, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent 
Societies highlighted its growing concern over sanctions' humanitarian impact. 
The Red Cross President, addressing the General Assembly on November 28, 1998 
mentioned his special concern about the situation in Iraq and said that "the 
high price paid by the most vulnerable groups of the population is apparent." 
He went on to call for "a formal mechanism" to "assess the potential impact of 
sanctions and monitor their effect." 

Because sanctions regimes are so different, their impact on the target 
economies is quite varied. Experts say that partial sanctions may reduce GNP 
by about 1% and that major sanctions, like those imposed on South Africa, 
probably reduce GNP by up to 5%. A 1996 study estimated a 10% drop in Iraq's 
GDP since the imposition of the UN sanctions. These may seem be modest 
declines; in fact, a GNP decline of 5% in a poor country is likely to result 
in considerable hardship for the poorest people, especially if food imports 
are cut. Reduction in imports of medicines and vaccines can also create great 
hardship and suffering, even though a relatively small proportion of overall 
GNP is at stake. 

*partie=titre Double Standards, Changing Rules *partie=nil  
According to the UN Charter, the imposition of sanctions may only follow after 
the determination of an aggressive act as defined in Article 39. However, as 
Claudia von Braunmuhl and Manfred Kulessa note in their 1995 study , the 
phrase "determination of an aggressive act" is not clearly defined. As a 
result, critics argue, sanctions are too often imposed unfairly, using 
standards that are unevenly applied or biased. The whims or interests of the 
mighty, not clear rules of international law, too often determine the targets 
of sanctions and the harshness of the sanction regimes. 

Sanctions, argued Ambassador Joseph Legwaila of Botswana in a January 1995 
Council debate , are meant to bring about a "change of behavior," they are not 
supposed to be "punishment or retribution." When sanctions were imposed on 
Iraq to induce its withdrawal from occupied Kuwait, skeptics pointed out that 
many other invasions and occupations had not resulted in sanctions. Israel, 
Morocco, Turkey and Indonesia, for example, all avoided sanctions when they 
invaded neighbors and occupied territory, even though they had been censured 
by the Security Council and called upon to withdraw. A Malaysian delegate 
expressed a widely-held opinion when he said in a 1997 General Assembly debate 
: "We regret that sanctions have of late been used, or have been perceived to 
be used, as a tool in the furtherance of narrow national interests of some of 
the Council's members, to serve specific political objectives or agendas." If 
the Security Council wants its sanctions to be seen as legitimate, it should 
impose them more consistently, critics argue. 

Once UN sanctions are in place, they are supervised by a sanctions committee 
of the Security Council, which operates secretively and cannot be monitored 
and made accountable to the public. This makes the ongoing sanctions process 
highly politicized and very open to pressure from Permanent Members. Sanctions 
may begin with one justification and continue with others. The Secretary 
General in his 1995 report mentioned this kind of problem: "The objectives . . 
. have not always been clearly defined. Indeed, they may sometimes seem to 
change over time. This combination of imprecision and mutability makes it 
difficult for the Security Council to agree on when . . . sanctions can be 
lifted." 
The General Assembly has called for increased transparency of the sanctions 
committees, and the Council itself has expressed its intention to move in this 
direction in a recent Presidential Statement. However, in late 1997, during 
the debate on the Security Council's annual report to the General Assembly, 
many delegations expressed disappointment that there had not been evidence of 
increased transparency. In reference to sanctions committees, the delegate 
from Spain said that "we do not see progress on the amount and substance of 
the information provided." 

Critics have also pointed out that a lack of institutional memory in the 
sanctions process increases the likelihood of arbitrariness. In most cases, 
the chairs of the sanctions committees rotate yearly, among non-permanent 
Council members. In addition, instead of offering advice and policy guidance 
on sanctions, the committees merely issue permits and authorizations . 
Moreover, member states keep the power of the committees strictly limited, 
preferring to retain control over sanctions at the national level, as opposed 
to strengthened rules and regulations developed by the UN . 

Sanctions often fail because they are not enforced. The United Nations has not 
been given the means to enforce sanctions in its own right. It must depend on 
compliance by member states and by traders and businesses. If they refuse to 
comply, then there is no means for the UN to impose penalties or bring them to 
justice. In many recent sanctions, the UN has had scarcely any monitoring 
capacity, much less the military forces necessary to interdict trade or the 
legal powers to make travel bans strictly binding . Not surprisingly, 
sanction-busting has flourished. 

The UN actually had one effective monitoring system, developed for its 
sanctions against South Africa. An office in the Centre on Transnational 
Corporations (CTC), linked to a wide network of monitoring sources, kept track 
of trade and investments in the apartheid state. Each year the Centre issued a 
major report, causing serious public criticism of sanction-flouting 
governments and businesses. The permanent members seem keen to avoid a 
repetition of this embarrassment. The CTC has been dismantled. Instead they 
prefer the UN to contract out its monitoring and assessment to one or more 
powerful states. The United States often acts as the enforcer, only deepening 
suspicions that sanctions are unfair instruments of great powers. 

*partie=titre Effects on Third States *partie=nil  
Sanctions also cause hardship outside the target country, in what is known 
(borrowing from military terminology) as "collateral damage." Sanctions 
invariably hurt countries that are neighbors or major trading partners, who 
lose export markets, government revenues, and employment opportunities. 
Sanctions may harm big business interests and they tend to cause suffering 
among the poorest and most vulnerable. Article 50 in Chapter VII of the UN 
Charter directly addresses the right of countries to appeal for financial 
assistance as compensation for their losses when sanctions are applied. 
Article 50 states: "If preventive enforcement measures against any State are 
taken by the Security Council, any other State, whether a member of the United 
Nations or not, which finds itself confronted with special economic problems 
arising from the carrying out of those measures shall have the right to 
consult the Security Council with regard to a solution of those problems." 
Anita Mathur, in a 1995 article , provides an excellent example of the 
problems borne by third states. She points out that in the case of the 
sanctions against the Former Yugoslavia, many international rail and road 
transportation routes were closed. Consequently, many neighboring nations were 
denied access to a number of their most heavily used trade routes, causing an 
increase in costs and delays of exports.

In the case of the sanctions imposed on Iraq, twenty-one nations claimed 
losses in revenue because of their important economic links to Iraq. The 
nations claiming damages included not only neighboring states such as Syria 
and Yemen, but also nations in Europe and East Asia . In response to these 
requests, the Council's Iraq sanctions committee merely collected all of the 
claims and published them with a standardized statement calling for UN members 
to provide voluntary assistance . In the end, no multilateral assistance was 
provided to any of the claimants and bilateral assistance mostly went to a 
small number of countries at the time of the Gulf War, given for political not 
for humanitarian reasons. 

*partie=titre Elusive but Occasional Success *partie=nil 
For all the pain they impose, sanctions usually do not succeed. There is a 
long history of failure to prove it. League of Nations sanctions, imposed in 
1935, failed to force Italy to pull out of Ethiopia. More recently, UN 
sanctions have failed to induce Libya to turn over two citizens for trial in 
the Lockerbie airliner bombing, or to induce Iraq to substantially modify its 
policies. Unilateral sanctions, imposed by a single state, are even more 
likely to fizzle. The United States grain embargo against the Soviet Union in 
1980 did not produce a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, nor have the long 
and punishing sanctions by the United States against Cuba resulted in 
political change on that island. Sanctions are often ignored by some 
governments or circumvented by traders chasing a high profit margin. 
Unilateral sanctions can even backfire, harming exporters in the 
sanction-imposing country most of all. In the 1980 grain embargo, US farmers 
suffered more than Soviet consumers. 

The UN Security Council imposed only two sanctions regimes in its first 
forty-five years. Surprisingly enough, both are generally considered 
effective. They targeted Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa, 
both white-only settler regimes. The Security Council imposed its first 
mandatory sanctions on Rhodesia in 1966 following the white minority's 
unilateral declaration of independence. The Council finally lifted the 
sanctions in 1979, after negotiations led to a black government. 

Britain and the United States opposed sanctions against apartheid South 
Africa, in spite of strong pressures in the Security Council. Finally, after 
weak "voluntary" measures (voted in 1963) had little result, Britain and the 
US agreed to a Council-imposed mandatory arms embargo in 1977. Efforts to 
toughen sanctions through the UN met with further Anglo-American opposition, 
including a draft resolution vetoed by both permanent members on March 8, 1988 
. Nevertheless, an international campaign induced private investors and 
governments to adopt sanctions measures. In 1989, the campaign finally 
succeeded in pushing a sanctions bill through the US Congress, against the 
opposition of the administration. Throughout, shippers, especially big oil 
companies, often flouted the embargoes. But thanks to the international 
campaign, maritime and longshore unions, along with United Nations agencies, 
helped enforce the sanctions by exposing sanction-breakers to public scrutiny. 
Many believe that the sanctions helped force the apartheid regime to finally 
capitulate, in a relatively peaceful transition of power. Whatever hardship 
the sanctions imposed on both Zimbabwe and South Africa, the outcome seems to 
have been well worth it. 

An influential study argues that of 116 cases of sanctions imposed between 
1914 and 1990, between a quarter and a third resulted in some policy change in 
the target country. The likelihood of "success," concluded the authors, 
decreases as the goals of sanctions become more general and "ambitious." 

*partie=titre UN RESPONSES TO CALLS FOR CHANGE *partie=nil 
Interest in sanctions has grown at various universities, think tanks and 
non-governmental organizations. When the Security Council increased its use of 
sanctions in the early 1990s, a rising tide of foundation grants funded a 
number of projects. Major projects include those conducted at the University 
of Notre Dame (the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies), 
the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict , the Carter Center of 
Emory University , the Council on Foreign Relations, Brown University (The 
Watson Institute for International Studies), the Stanley Foundation the 
National Academy of Sciences, the Center for Economic and Social Rights , the 
Heritage Foundation , and the Development and Peace Foundation . Meanwhile, UN 
agencies commissioned studies, including a major project undertaken by German 
scholars . The General Assembly Working Group on Agenda for Peace set up a 
sub-group on sanctions, chaired by Ambassador Celso Amorim of Brazil. In late 
1997, a study on the humanitarian impact of sanctions was completed at the 
request of the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), currently known as 
the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) . OCHA has also 
recently completed country-specific technical studies on the humanitarian 
impact of sanctions.

These studies address issues that decision-makers should consider when 
choosing to apply sanctions. Included in these discussions are the 
humanitarian effects of sanctions, the effects of sanctions on third states, 
unequal bases for the application of sanctions, criteria for the choice of 
sanctions, and types of sanctions. Most importantly, these projects include 
recommendations that suggest how sanctions should be implemented in the 
future. Recent statements from the UN have shown that officials and delegates 
have begun to take these issues into serious consideration, though the 
national interests of the great powers continue to dominate sanctions 
decision-making. 

*partie=titre Humanitarian Exemptions to Sanctions *partie=nil 
The Secretary General addressed the issue of sanctions in his report on 
Humanitarian Crises, released on July 15, 1995. Urging the Security Council 
and the international community to address root causes in order to head off 
the conflicts, he called attention to the potential of sanctions for creating 
deeper social distress. "Action taken by the international community to end 
oppression or bring about change by non-military means," he said, "can have 
major ramifications for those who are already victimized by inequitable 
political and economic structures. Economic sanctions hit the poor hardest and 
can have a deleterious impact on the work of humanitarian organizations." In 
January 1996, the Secretary General presented another report to the Security 
Council, asking it to reconsider the impact of sanctions. He pointed out that 
sanctions may greatly set back development and that sanctions can impede or 
even block the work of humanitarian relief organizations. Then, in August 
1996, a major study on the impact of armed conflict on children was published 
. Prepared by Ms. Graca Machel for the General Assembly, the study stated that 
"humanitarian exemptions tend to be ambiguous and are interpreted arbitrarily 
and inconsistently. . . Delays, confusion and the denial of requests to import 
essential humanitarian goods cause resource shortages [that]fall most 
heavily on the poor."

Recent statements from UN committees have also reflected a concern to take the 
humanitarian impacts of sanctions into account when imposing sanctions. In a 
1997 statement , the Subgroup on the Question of UN Imposed Sanctions stressed 
that "unintended side effects on the civilian population should be minimized 
by making the appropriate humanitarian exceptions in the Security Council 
resolutions." In an especially influential move, the UN Committee on Economic, 
Social and Cultural Rights adopted a statement in December 1997 concluding 
that more attention needs to be paid to safeguarding the rights of vulnerable 
groups in sanctioned countries and calling attention to the possibility that 
sanctions may violate basic economic, social and cultural rights.

In a 1997 resolution , the General Assembly requested that information on the 
impact of sanctions be reported to the Security Council. The Security Council, 
under mounting pressure, has increasingly called on the Office for the 
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to conduct studies on the impact 
of sanctions. OCHA has conducted impact studies on the situation Burundi , and 
it has led an Inter-Agency team on Sierra Leone . The Council cannot ignore 
these studies and it is likely to take them into account when deciding on 
imposing new sanctions. The Council is now much more likely to make exemptions 
to minimize sanctions' humanitarian effect. In December 1997, another study 
was completed at the request of DHA, in which methodologies for pre-assessing 
and monitoring the humanitarian impacts of sanctions impacts were further 
detailed.

The Council's steps towards taking humanitarian considerations into account 
were demonstrated in the growing debates over a partial lifting of the Iraq 
sanctions, beginning in 1996. Then, in October 1997, a resolution imposing 
sanctions in Sierra Leone was the first resolution of its kind that addressed 
humanitarian impact issues. The resolution specifically requested the junta to 
cease interfering with the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people.

*partie=titre Rule-Based Imposition of Sanctions *partie=nil 
The UN has faced increased criticism that sanctions are not applied nor lifted 
on a principled basis, and the issue has been brought up in different 
committees and debates in the UN. A 1995 DHA-commissioned study recommended 
that guiding legal principles for the imposition of sanctions be established, 
and that objectives be clearly defined. In a General Assembly debate in 
October 1997, a Malaysian delegate stated that "when they are applied 
sanctions should have clear and specific objectives and parameters and be 
subject to regular reviews and evaluations by the Council." The final 
statement from the General Assembly Subgroup of UN Imposed Sanctions offered 
similar recommendations, and added that that "the steps required from the 
target country for the sanctions to be lifted should be precisely defined." 
The Subgroup highlighted a need for precise mandates for sanctions committees, 
increased "transparency, fairness and effectiveness," and more adequately 
staffed secretariats for the sanctions committees.

A working paper submitted by the Russian Federation in early 1998 called for 
sanctions to be introduced only in the case of a real and objective 
determination of a violation of international law. It further stressed that 
sanctions must "pursue clearly defined purposes, have a time-frame, be subject 
to regular review and provide clearly stipulated conditions for lifting them," 
and that their imposition must not be politically motivated. 

*partie=titre Assistance to Third States *partie=nil 
In his 1995 report, the Secretary General called for urgent action to respond 
to the problem of assistance to third states affected by sanctions, saying 
that the costs of sanctions "should be borne equitably by all Member States 
and not exclusively by the few who have the misfortune to be neighbors or 
major economic partners of the target country." In the January 1995 Council 
debate , Ambassador Danilo Turk of Slovenia argued along the same lines that a 
disproportionate burden of sanctions is borne by neighboring states and 
trading partners and he argued for "statements of impact assessment" so that 
burdens could be more equitably shared. More recently, in a January 1998, the 
Russian Federation went so far as to propose that "the creation of a situation 
in which the consequences of the introduction of sanctions would inflict 
considerable material and financial harm on third states is not permissible." 

In a report of August 28, 1997, the Secretary-General described measures to be 
taken in order to develop the capacities to conduct pre-assessments of the 
effect on third states. In debates in the Charter Committee in early 1998, 
delegations expressed interest in a new permanent mechanism, such as the 
administration of a trust fund, that would compensate third states affected by 
sanctions .

Experts have also issued recommendations for the provision of assistance to 
third states. In a 1994 article , Gian Luca Burci recommended that the General 
Assembly adopt guidelines on the matter; these guidelines would include an 
indication of the areas that would receive priority attention and of the 
measures to be taken. For example, Burci proposed that third states be 
permitted access to certain commodities affected by the sanctions at 
subsidized prices, under the monitoring of the World Trade Organization. 
Another expert recommended that the Security Council commission an agency to 
complete a prior assessment of the effects on the economies of neighboring 
states that have economic links with the target state. The sanctions could 
then be fine tuned in order to minimize the impact on third states.

*partie=titre Targeted Sanction *partie=nil  
Many experts believe that targeted sanctions can be more humanitarian and more 
effective. Targeting implies sanctions that deliver pressure where it is most 
effective. Arms embargoes are one type that is commonly used. Another type 
seeks to severely hit key groups like the business or political elite. These 
groups have a major voice in policy making and they are unlikely to suffer 
harm from broad-based sanctions. Sanctions aimed at these groups include 
travel bans and financial sanctions . In a 1997 article , David Cortright and 
George Lopez illustrate the potential impacts of financial sanctions on a 
target state: in October 1997, Croatian leaders finally agreed to surrender an 
indicted war criminal to the criminal tribunal in the Hague in order to avoid 
a continuing denial of loans for Croatia from the IMF and World Bank.

Targeted financial sanctions that directly impact leaders are potentially even 
more effective. Such sanctions could freeze assets of leaders (and their 
surrogates) held in foreign banks or financial institutions, making it 
virtually impossible for them to keep their overseas secret accounts intact. 
Unfortunately, banking and business interests vigorously oppose many types of 
financial sanctions. As the New York Times reported in March 1996, Britain, 
France and Germany are "traditionally reluctant to take any action that might 
damage their position as international financial centers." Banks simply do not 
want to give up information on their private accounts and they are nervous 
about the wider implications of "political" interference in their relations 
with their customers. For reasons such as these, sanctions that target 
individual assets are very rarely considered. 

The Security Council's increasing interest in imposing targeted sanctions 
instead of comprehensive trade bans is evidenced in the text of the more 
recent sanctions-imposing resolutions. As Council President Juan Somavia of 
Chile said in October 1997 , "…when in response to threats to international 
peace and security, a decision has been taken to impose sanctions, the Council 
has sought, to the extent possible and in keeping with the goal of effective 
implementation, to target those responsible for the actions that brought about 
the imposition of the sanctions." The October 1997 sanctions in Sierra Leone 
comprised only an oil and arms embargo and a travel ban on members of Sierra 
Leone's military junta. In the case of Angola, the Security Council took a 
step further, deciding to impose travel bans on the UNITA rebel leadership in 
the fall of 1997. The Council also passed a resolution in November 1997 
raising the possibility of travel bans on Iraqi officials in November 1997 in 
response to Iraq's refusal to comply with UN weapons inspectors. Although 
these sanctions were never actually imposed and were officially ended in May 
1998 , many well-informed observers believe that they had a powerful 
psychological effect on the Iraqi leadership by demonstrating their 
vulnerability. This is believed to have opened the way for a later agreement 
between Iraq and the UN.

The Security Council is particularly interested in increasing its use of 
financial sanctions. However, the legal means for implementing these sanctions 
are not established, nor have the hesitations of the banking and financial 
community been overcome. Important steps in this direction include an "Expert 
Seminar on Targeting UN Financial Sanctions" held in Switzerland in March 1998 
as well as two high-level meetings in New York on the same topic convened by 
the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations.

*partie=titre CASE STUDIES *partie=nil 
After imposing its first sanctions against Southern Rhodesia (1966) and South 
Africa (1977), the Security Council followed with sanctions in eleven more 
nations: Iraq (1990), the former Yugoslavia (1991), Libya, Somalia and Liberia 
(1992), Haiti and Angola (1993), Rwanda (1994), Sudan and Burundi (1996), and 
Sierra Leone (1997). Recent sanctions policies of member states and UN 
agencies have been reflected in their reactions to the latest developments in 
Iraq, Libya, Burundi, and Sudan, as well as the case of US unilateral 
sanctions against Cuba. 

*partie=titre Iraq *partie=nil 
Over the course of more than seven years of sanctions against Iraq, several UN 
agencies and human rights organizations have produced reports showing 
malnutrition due to blockage of food, and severe health problems due to 
absence of medicines and water purification systems. Some observers have 
argued that the sanctions policies have been imposed primarily in order to 
regulate the world's supply (and price) of oil, rather than to change the 
policies of the target state. This argument seems plausible, but it is 
difficult to prove. Sanctions experts agree, though, that in general there are 
often hidden reasons behind the nominal legalities used to justify sanctions. 
As time has passed, the humanitarian emergency in Iraq has deepened. Evidence 
has emerged that the United States and Britain, through their role in the UN 
Security Council, have blocked shipments to Iraq of harmless but vital goods, 
ranging from medicines to sewage treatment facilities, clearly damaging public 
health. The UN sanctions committee on Iraq has been hostage to political 
pressures that have caused great suffering, widespread malnutrition and many 
tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths -- perhaps more than during the actual 
Gulf War hostilities in 1991. The great majority of countries now oppose these 
sanctions, even if many countries remain sharply critical of the regime of 
Saddam Hussein. 

The clash over sanctions took a dramatic form in mid-1996. Well into the sixth 
year of the sanctions on Iraq -- sanctions that had been originally imposed 
under very different circumstances -- many countries called for the Security 
Council to lift its trade embargo, on the grounds that it was causing too much 
human suffering. The United States and Britain blocked this initiative and 
insisted on harsh conditions and a limited deal, that would allow the country 
to sell oil in exchange for food, medicines and other vital necessities under 
strict UN control. The Iraqi government was at first not willing to accept 
these conditions. Finally, after a deal was proposed in April 1996, Baghdad's 
position softened. Pressure on the United States and Britain intensified after 
a report was issued by the New York-based Center for Economic and Social 
Rights on May 18 detailing the human suffering caused by the sanctions, as 
reported by an investigative team of 24 experts from 8 countries. With a green 
light from the US and Britain, Baghdad signed an agreement with the UN on May 
20, allowing for the sale of $2 billion in Iraqi oil over a six-month period. 
Planning for implementation went forward. But on July 31, the United States 
government announced that it would oppose the agreement. There was fury in the 
Security Council where everyone knew that the United States had itself 
originally set conditions for the agreement. Ambassador Tono Eitel of Germany, 
Chairman of the Council Sanctions Committee on Iraq, told New York Times 
reporter Barbara Crossette he was "troubled and very sad" over the US action . 
Observers speculated that US electoral politics had caused the last-minute 
shift. On August 7, the US changed course again and finally gave its formal 
agreement. Shortly afterwards, however, Iraq's government moved troops into a 
Kurdish zone in the north. Again, the United States and Britain insisted that 
the sanctions would have to stay in place. 

After intense pressure from Council members and others, the US agreed to yet 
another deal, that was announced on November 25, allowing $2 billion in oil 
sales during a six-month period. Many thought the agreement was strongly 
conditioned by multinational oil companies. As the New York Times reported , 
citing "oil analysts," under conditions of strong demand and low reserves at 
refineries, Iraqi sales "are likely to only slightly reduce the cost of a 
barrel of oil on world markets." 

On October 28, 1996, UNICEF head Carol Bellamy held a news conference about 
the crisis in Iraq . She said that 4,500 children were dying every month of 
hunger and disease because of conditions imposed by the sanctions. Yasushi 
Akashi, Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs said that nations 
were not contributing to emergency relief funds because they thought that the 
embargo was soon to be lifted . Other experts noted that Iraq's water and 
sewage system was crumbling, leading to greater risk of infectious disease. 
The World Food Programme announced that 180,000 children under the age of 5 in 
Iraq were malnourished . In an October 29 article on the subject, the New York 
Times reported that "The standoff over the oil sales has annoyed other 
diplomats on the Council who say repeated American efforts to stall the plan 
make sanctions appear unduly harsh and harmful to the most innocent Iraqis." 
On December 9, the UN signed another deal that had been announced on November 
25. Secretary General Boutros Ghali said "This is a victory for the poorest of 
the poor in Iraq, for the women, the children, the sick and the disabled ." 
And Security Council President Paolo Fulci of Italy said when announcing the 
deal : "More than 20 million innocent Iraqi civilians will be finally saved 
from starvation and untold suffering . . . anesthesia will be finally 
available for surgery . . . four out of ten newborn children will no longer 
die before they reach age one." The following day, there were reports that oil 
had started to flow. Many weeks passed before the oil was actually delivered 
to buyers and months went by before the payments were translated into food and 
other humanitarian supplies. Assessments then indicated that the sums approved 
under the program were insufficient to overcome Iraq's humanitarian emergency. 
Pressure mounted for the Council to increase the permitted oil sales or to 
life the sanctions altogether. 

Then, in the fall of 1997, Iraq began to obstruct UN inspectors' access to 
certain sites. Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, in a November 10 news 
conference, explained Iraq's objections to the UN weapons inspectors, calling 
them a cover for American espionage and an infringement on Iraq's sovereignty. 
Iraq was apparently provoking a crisis in hopes that it could eventually get 
the sanctions lifted, with the help of its Council allies Russia and France. 
As a result, in October, the Security Council passed resolution 1134, 
expressing the intention to impose a travel ban on Iraqi officials and 
high-ranking military officers . And the following month the Council actually 
imposed the ban, though it was not enforced, in order to build pressure 
gradually.

In February 1998, as the crisis with Iraq intensified, the Council increased 
the amount of permissible sales under the oil-for-food program . Shortly 
afterwards, the Secretary-General reached an agreement with Iraq on the matter 
of inspections. Iraq's primary Council allies, France and Russia, had 
encouraged a gradual easing of sanctions as an incentive for cooperation. 
Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov, in a statement made in March, expressed his 
hope that the end of sanctions "will not be late in coming."
 
In late April, Richard Butler, executive chairman of the UN's inspection team, 
issued a report which stated that virtually no progress has been made in the 
destruction of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons . As a result of the 
findings of the report, the Security Council again voted to extend sanctions 
on Iraq. But there is broad agreement that Iraq no longer has atomic weapons 
infrastructure and that its missile capability is minimal. The chemical and 
biological weapons issues remain the major barrier to the lifting of 
sanctions, in spite of continuing pressure from Russia, France and China, as 
well as a large number of smaller countries. 

*partie=titre Libya *partie=nil 
In 1992, Libya was subjected to sanctions as a result of its refusal to 
extradite suspects accused of destroying a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, 
Scotland. The Council determined that Libya's actions constituted a threat to 
international peace and security and in resolution 748, Libya was subjected to 
a combination of sanctions including an arms and air embargo, and diplomatic 
sanctions. Later, in resolution 883 of 1993, financial sanctions were imposed 
on Libya.

The Libyan sanctions regime has attracted sharp criticism. A distinguished 
international lawyer from Canada, Geoffrey Grenville-Wood, wrote in a 1993 
article that the sanctions against Libya to force extradition of the two 
suspects were "spurious and ill-founded," since the Council was wrong in 
claiming international peace and security were threatened. Did France agree to 
hand over its agent that blew up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand? 
Grenville-Wood asked. 

In July 1998, the Organization of African Unity (OAU),the Non-Aligned 
Movement, the League of Arab States, and the Organization of the Islamic 
Conference called on the Security Council to lift the sanctions imposed on 
Libya by accepting one of the three options offered by Libya . Libya has 
proposed that the suspects be tried by a court in a neutral country, by the 
International Court of Justice, or by a special tribunal created specifically 
for this case. The groups expressed their intention of no longer complying 
with the sanctions unless the Security Council accepts one of these 
alternatives. The OAU further stated that whether or not one of the 
alternatives is accepted, the OAU would no longer comply with air traffic bans 
when pertaining to particular cases such as religious obligations, 
humanitarian need, or official OAU trips. 

As a result of pressure from member states, on July 21 the US officially 
announced that it "would seriously consider" the creation of a special court 
in the Netherlands to try the two Libyan suspects, according to a New York 
Times article . Administration officials said that under the proposal, Britain 
would appoint three Scottish judges to try the case in The Hague. So it 
appears that the controversial Libya sanctions may soon end. Though they have 
had far less negative consequences than the Iraq sanctions, they have been 
seen by the majority of the international community as symptomatic of 
sanctions abuse by a small number of great powers.

*partie=titre Burundi and Sudan *partie=nil 
In the summer of 1996, the Council imposed a new sanctions regime on Burundi 
due to a coup d'etat and deteriorating inter-ethnic conflict. Given the 
poverty of the country, there was serious concern about the humanitarian 
effect of the sanctions. On August 6, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced 
that the Burundi sanctions were preventing humanitarian aid from entering the 
country, threatening the well being of hundreds of thousands of people. WFP 
warned that the cut-off of emergency food, medicine and fuel may exacerbate 
ethnic tensions. At about the same time, ironically, the UN Department of 
Humanitarian Affairs dispatched a 5-person mission to Burundi to examine the 
consequences of sanctions and the mission was at first blocked from the 
country because of sanctions-imposed barriers to air travel in neighboring 
Kenya. 

In December 1997, DHA produced a report on the regional sanctions against 
Burundi based on a mission sent to the Great Lakes region in October. Although 
the report states that humanitarian goods and supplies were exempted by the 
regional sanctions authorities, critics have noted that because of a lack of 
administration and coordination, there have been serious delays in having 
these exempted materials reach those in need. In addition, according to a 
March 1997 report , sanctions have created hyper-inflation and increasing 
unemployment. The Council has also faced criticism on its Sudan sanctions, 
likewise imposed in 1996 . The Sudan sanctions are similar to the Libyan 
sanctions, for they are designed to force the Sudanese government to turn over 
alleged criminals -- in this case people who allegedly attempted to 
assassinate President Mubarak of Egypt. International lawyers insist that this 
goes beyond the proper bounds for the Council's action and that it undermines 
the system of extradition treaties. Sudan's economy is already in very great 
difficulty, critics point out. Sanctions make matters worse and seem certain 
to impose hardships that will not be justified. 

*partie=titre Cuba *partie=nil 
A survey of sanctions found that the United States was the primary initiator 
of sanctions -- it accounted for 70 percent of the cases. A third of the cases 
were unilateral sanctions and most of the rest were ad hoc coalitions. Only 12 
percent of all sanctions were applied in a truly collective manner. Another 
study noted that just in the period 1993 to 1996, sixty-one US laws and 
executive actions were enacted authorizing unilateral economic sanctions. The 
sanctioned countries represent 42 percent of the world's population.
The unilateral United States trade embargo of Cuba, in force since 1962, is 
opposed by a large majority of the world's countries and is regularly 
condemned in the UN General Assembly. The embargo has done harm to the Cuban 
economy and made travel between the US and Cuba difficult and costly. Even 
governments that are decidedly unenthusiastic about Cuban President Fidel 
Castro consider the embargo illegal and see it as unfairly punishing ordinary 
Cubans. After the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution 
condemning the US embargo in 1995 for the fourth straight year , the Secretary 
General wrote to governments and agencies asking for information that could be 
incorporated into a report. By 5 September, 60 countries and 5 agencies had 
responded. The responses were all critical of the embargo.

The US Helms-Burton Act of 1996 has imposed penalties on third parties doing 
business in Cuba, bringing sharp protests from Canada, Mexico, European 
countries and many others. On June 4, 1996, the General Assembly of the 
Organization of American States passed a resolution asking for a legal opinion 
on the embargo from the Inter-American Juridical Committee. The Committee 
returned an opinion that Helms-Burton "is not in conformity with international 
law." This opinion was sent to the United Nations on September 18, 1996. On 
November 12, 1996, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution again 
condemning the embargo by the largest vote ever -- 117 ayes, 3 nays and 25 
abstentions . All the European Union countries voted in the affirmative, as 
did Canada. The new resolution contained language sharply critical of the 
Helms-Burton law. 

In 1997, the General Assembly again passed a resolution condemning the embargo 
and in April 1998, the UN Human Rights Commission voted to criticize 
unilateral sanctions imposed on other countries such as the U.S. economic 
embargo against Cuba . The text urges states not to adopt unilateral measures 
that run counter to international law or the UN The United States clearly has 
no support for these sanctions and opposition has been growing steadily. 
Though there are few signs that the US embargo will end any time soon, 
increasing pressure from religious groups, human rights organizations and 
business lobbies has led the administration to reduce its reliance on 
unilateral sanction initiatives and even the full force of the Helms-Burton 
act has not been applied. A July 31, 1998 article in the New York Times 
announced that "the White House and Congress have decided that in many cases, 
sanctions are not an effective way to make foreign policy."
 
*partie=titre Which Way for Sanctions *partie=nil 
Despite the UN's increasing interest in humanitarian exemptions and targeted 
sanctions, many of the problems with sanctions still exist. So far, not a dime 
has been allocated through the UN to help share the burden of trading 
partners. Targeted sanctions have not yet come into general use. The Security 
Council is averse to adopting blanket humanitarian exemptions when imposing 
sanctions. Monitoring has not markedly improved, and many of the practices and 
procedures of sanctions committees are still seriously flawed. The Security 
Council remains in control and permanent members seem disinclined to modify 
past practices. They prefer not to be burdened with rules and they do not want 
to be billed for collateral damage. 

What way ahead for sanctions? Sanctions advocates would argue that they still 
hold great promise. But only under conditions of wide international agreement, 
clear legal basis and purpose, and minimal harm to the innocent. These seem 
elusive goals in a world where a few powerful states and private interests use 
sanctions for their own geo-strategic and economic gains. Even so, sanctions 
continue to offer interesting possibilities. The breadth and intensity of the 
UN discussions suggests that many delegations (and many non-governmental 
organizations) think sanctions can someday be made to work.