Legal Approach to the Effectiveness of Multilateral and Unilateral Economic Sanctions

Abstract

Economic sanctions are the measures of economic characteristics taken by states, whether be it collective or individual, against danger to international peace and security to express disapproval of the acts of the target state or to induce those states to change some policy or practice or even government structure. Economic sanctions are rapidly becoming one of the major tools of international governance of the post-Cold War era and use of sanctions has increased substantially specially in the past decades. Economic sanctions have taken a variety of different forms by various organizations, entities or group of countries in the international Community against danger to international peace and security. While most of the measures are on the basis of nternational agreements or international law, the unilateral actions are increasing in recent decades. However, the jurisdiction of economic sanctions by individual country or a group of countries is not always clear and sometimes the practices are arbitrary. It is presumed that, since international organizations have different motives and purposes of employing economic sanctions, different economic sanctions may conflict or complement with each other. Therefore, this paper attempts to explain different forms of economic sanctions and provide the legal analysis on them. By focusing on legal aspect of multilateral or unilateral economic sanctions, this paper will address what kind of judicial schemes are in practice and how these affect countries decision making in adopting sanction measures and what can be done to improve multilateral sanctions which should be strengthened as primary form of economic sanctions.