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Abstract
Unilateral economic sanctions are the important tool for a country to pursue its foreign policy, but they also pose serious challenges to the principle of sustainable development. The principle of sustainable development in international law includes the inter-crossing, dialectical and unified connotation elements, such as human rights, development and environment, which corresponds to the value pursuit of individuals, countries or societies, and all mankind respectively. In practice, unilateral economic sanctions have aggravated the human rights crisis of individuals, the development crisis of countries and the environmental crisis of all mankind. In the dimension of human rights, unilateral economic sanctions violate the basic human rights of individuals and may lead to a broader humanitarian disaster. In the development dimension, unilateral economic sanctions are harmful to the legitimate development rights and interests of the country and produce "spillover effects" that endanger the global economic development. In the environmental dimension, unilateral economic sanctions force the country to lower environmental standards and intensify global environmental damage. Fundamentally, the broadening of the scope of unilateral economic sanctions, the excessive politicization of motives and the serious fragmentation of the rule system of international law have led to the conflict between unilateral economic sanctions and the principle of sustainable development. To this end, we should, first, establish the priority of the concept of sustainable development, and promote the principle of sustainable development to become the goal pursued by unilateral economic sanctions or at least fully taken into account; second, we should introduce the exceptions of sustainable development needs, and include the needs of economic and social development and environmental protection into the exemption reasons; and third, we should strengthen the binding nature of the principle of sustainable development and promote the development of the principle of sustainable development as the basic principle of international law. China should actively implement the principle of sustainable development through foreign-related legislation, law enforcement and justice, maintain the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on international law, and promote the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind.