The efficacy of UN sanctions

Security Dialogue

Volumn 31, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 279-292

  Mack, Andrew ^a   Khan, Asif ^b  

^a UNITED NATIONS   (United States)

^b Off UN Spec Coord M East P   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0039333238     PISSN: 09670106     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0967010600031003003     Document Type: Article

References (12)

1. David Cortright & George A. Lopez, The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN Strategies in the 1990s (New York: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
2. Gary C. Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott & Kimberley Ann Elliot, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy, 2nd edn (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990). A revised and more up-to-date study was published in 1999. The broad findings of the earlier study were confirmed. See Cortright & Lopez (note 1 above), p. 15.
3. Kim Richard Nossal, 'Liberal-Democratic Regimes, International Sanctions and Global Governance', in Raimo Väyrynen, ed., Global Governance and Enforcement: Issues and Strategies (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), pp. 127-149.
4. Elizabeth Gibbons, Sanctions in Haiti: Human Rights and Democracy Under Assault, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington Papers 177 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999).
5. One possible exception to the rule that commitment to sanctions monitoring and implementation is a function of major power interest may be recent revitalization of the sanctions regime imposed on UNITA in Angola. After Canada joined the Security Council, Robert Fowler, the energetic Canadian ambassador, took over the chairing of the Angolan sanctions committee and dispatched a team of experts to Africa to study the extent of sanctions busting. His subsequent report was a powerful exercise in 'naming and shaming'. It demonstrated that a determined middle power could make a significant difference to what had become a largely moribund regime. Formidable implementation problems remain, however, and the long-term success of this effort is by no means assured.
6. John Stremlau, Sharpening International Sanctions: Towards a Stronger Role for the United Nations (New York: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, November 1996).
7. Cortright & Lopez (note 1 above), p. 5.
8. Richard Garfield, Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children from 1990 to 1998: Assessing the Impact of Economic Sanctions (Notre Dame, IN: Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame & Fourth Freedom Foundation, March 1999). Available at http://www.fourthfreedom.org/sanctions/garfield.html.
9. See Annual Report on the Work of the Organization, A/53/1, para. 64, available at http://www.un.org/Docs/SG/Report98/con98.htm.
10. Gitty M. Armani, 'A Larger Role for Positive Sanctions in Cases of Compellence?', Working Paper no. 12 (Los Angeles, CA: Center for International Relations, University of California, May 1997).
11. Gareth Evans, Cooperating for Peace (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1993).
12. Iraq's persistent defiance of the UN in the face of the most effective (in terms of impact) sanctions regime ever imposed on a modern state is not what sanctions theory would predict - or can easily explain. Even though individual regime members may have benefited from the sanctions-stimulated black market there can be no doubt that the reduction in Iraq's material power that came with a halving of the Iraqi GDP and the denial of arms imports would have been a serious blow to the regime.