The Proportionality of Unilateral “Targeted” Sanctions: Whose Interests Should Count?

Abstract

Comprehensive sanctions were considered to be disproportionate in their collateral effects for the harm caused to the populations of sanctioned States. With the emergence of the concept of targeted sanctions, questions regarding proportionality were expected to fade away. After all, targeted sanctions were supposed to be inherently proportional precisely because they were targeted. Nevertheless, the use of selective embargoes, also known as sectoral sanctions, continues to give rise to issues of proportionality. One of the lacunas of the current system is there is no uniform proportionality standard that applies to unilateral sanctions as these measures fall with different types of legal regimes, each with their own proportionality standard. Drawing from recent State practice and the existing legal standards, the present contribution maps the respective interests that should inform proportionality discussions in distinct sanctions regimes and explores to what extent the proportionality principle can account for each of these interests.

Court of Justice of the European Union, European Court of Human Rights, respect for human rights and restrictive sanctions

“…With regard to the criterion of equivalent protection, the French government argues that its use is authorized only in the event that the founding treaties of international organizations "do not indicate that they would prevail over the Convention in the event of conflict" whereas, instead, the UN Charter contains a similar provision (…)". position, since, from a methodological point of view, it has deviated from the Chamber regarding the examination concerning the proportionality of the sanctioning measure (Hofer, 2020;Linderfalk, Gill-Pedro, 2021). So the Grand Chamber avoided applying the equivalent protection test, thus coming to consider the conduct of Switzerland as a conduct that infringes the most intimate content of art.…”

Unilateral economic sanctions and food security

“…The concept “sanction” is widespread in international politics and international law; in spite of its frequent use, however, its definition remains highly imprecise (Hofer, 2020, pp. 399–400).…”

“…Unilateral economic sanctions do not fall squarely within a single existing legal category in international law and may be divided into categories such as retorsion, reprisals, countermeasures, third-party countermeasures (solidarity measures) and sanctions (Bogdanova, 2022, p. 60). Although the paper does not focus on such different categories of unilateral economic sanctions or its legitimacy under international law, we note that most unilateral economic sanctions have severe consequences that are not limited to the civilian population of the targeted State but also extend to third countries (Hofer, 2020, p. 404).…”

“…The political objective of a sanction may range from coercing the target into changing its behaviour, preventing a target from behaving in a certain manner, stigmatising or outcasting the target, etc. (Hofer, 2020). Generally, sanctions seek to “punish” the targeted State to ensure that it behaves in the manner desired by the sanctioning State or international organization.…”