Abstract
The implementation of the United Nations security council sanctions by member states has gained increasing importance in the sanctions debate over the past 15 years. Having remained long neglected in academic circles, the sanctions review process sponsored by the Swiss, German, and Swedish governments over the past decade has been instrumental in putting the question of implementation at the centre of the sanctions research agenda. One of the main innovations that has characterized the sanctions landscape in the aftermath of the Cold War is the transformation of sanctions instruments: the classical trade embargoes that dominated the sanctions scene for most of the 20th century have given way to more sophisticated and carefully crafted “targeted” measures. The establishment of targeted sanctions has been accompanied by other novel developments, such as the practice of targeting individuals rather than states. These transformations make it necessary to explore how the national implementation of multilateral sanctions has been affected, as well as its consequences for the efficacy of the measures.
This article sketches the main issues surrounding the national implementation of United Nations sanctions. It identifies the most salient trends in the implementation of sanctions by individual states—and a regional entity, namely the European Union—and outlines how they have been affected by the emergence of targeted, often blacklist-based sanctions. At the same time, the analysis endeavours to focus on the impact that new developments have on the efficacy of the measures concerned.
The article is divided into four sections. The first provides a brief introduction to the transformations in sanctions as a tool over the past two decades. A second section outlines conflicting trends working both in favour and to the detriment of sanctions implementation. The third reviews the problems caused by the increasing encroachment on domestic legal orders by recent sanctions regimes. A final section discusses the difficulties posed by the violation of standards of due process resulting from UN blacklists, which merits special attention as it is the source of a number of legal cases in Europe.