The Legality of Unilateral Economic Sanctions in International Law: A Critical Analysis Beyond UN Security Council Authorization

Abstract

Unilateral economic sanctions, especially those that one imposes without the mandate of the United Nations Security Council, have become a characteristic of contemporary international relations. Their legality, however, is extremely controversial within the framework of the Charter of the UN and in customary international law. A critical approach of this paper is to understand whether such sanctions could be considered legal countermeasures or not, or whether they are banned types of coercive actions violating the principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and human rights. The research analyses the major provisions of the Charter Articles 2(4), 41, and 103 and pertinent International Court of Justice (ICJ) cases and state practice using a doctrinal legal approach, which is complemented with comparative case analysis. It concludes that a majority of unilateral and extraterritorial sanctions exceed the legal limits of the countermeasures in the sense that they are not collectively authorized, proportional, and do not safeguard humanitarian interests. The paper concludes that in the case of institutional control over humanitarian damage, only multilateral sanctions in accordance with the UN Charter can be discussed as the legitimate and effective ones.