Search: extraterritorial sanctions

I am pleased to announce that a new ILA Study Group on sanctions has been formed. Larissa van den Herik and I will be working together, with the support of a group of sanctions scholars and practitioners, to address questions of individualization, formalization and interplay in multilateral sanctions. Here are the three aims of the group: To evaluate the individualization and formalization of UN sanctions. What are the pros, cons and interconnections of developments towards individualized and rules-based conceptions of UN sanctions? How targeted must targeting be and what are...

...cargo into the North Korean ports of Nampo, Najin, and Wonsan between January 1 and May 30, 2018. According to U.S. calculations, those vessels had the capacity to unload nearly 1.4 million barrels of oil, nearly three times the volume allowed under U.N. sanctions. Even if they carried one-third of their load, they would have reached 500,000 barrels – the annual cap imposed on North Korea by UN sanctions. The sanctions could be made more effective through the following measures. Measures to Strengthen UN Sanctions There are four possible measures...

[Chidi Anselm Odinkalu is Senior Manager for Africa with the Open Society Justice Initiative. He received his Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics & Political Science and is a former Chair of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission.] The invocation of sanctions against senior officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) by the Trump administration in 2020, has been the subject of considerable examination and controversy rightfully directed at the actions of the US government. First, temporarily blocked by by a US District Judge and now revoked by the...

All in all, the economic impact of the sanctions is great, but the sanctions’ effects on human rights, in particular, of the Byelorussians, is significant too. It might be argued that the inflicted sanctions are disproportionate to the scale of the incident and were determined largely by the pursued geopolitical agenda of bringing down the Lukashenko regime. In other words, the primary reason for such severe sanctions is rather the repression of the opposition than merely the air incident (the pane, after all, continued its flight to Vilnius). Three main arguments substantiate...

exceptions from the list, disclosing the referring state, disclosing reasons for listing and delisting, and potentially even extending the mandate of the Ombudsperson to other relevant sanctions regimes. The last suggestion in particular would be a fascinating development – an Ombudsperson with jurisdiction over other sanctions committees with listing powers would be the first step towards a generalized review process. The Security Council’s consolidated sanctions list has generated much attention due to the vast array of legal challenges the list has sparked over the past decade. Approximately 30 such cases...

also discussed overlap between sanctions regimes and the ICC, and ways to improve cooperation. For background on the main issues, see my blog here. There is little question that an expansion of the Ombudsperson’s mandate at least to more sanctions regimes, and better cooperation between criminal tribunals and the UN Sanctions regimes will improve the effectiveness of UN sanctions. Moreover, they complement the UN High Level Review of Sanctions which is coming to an end, in which a parallel effort to assess and improve sanctions regimes has taken place.  ...

...supported by international law. It is whether Congress had the jurisdiction to prescribe a municipal law imposing for extraterritorial conduct. That answer is, in most cases, no. ATS cases have wrongly focused solely on personal jurisdiction though the real limiting issue in ATS litigation should be one of subject matter jurisdiction. International law treatises of the U.S. founding era recognized very few bases for asserting extraterritorial legislative jurisdiction. Though that list has expanded, it is not unlimited. It is highly doubtful that Congress ever intended the ATS to govern extraterritorial...

sanctions. Lawful sanctions include judicially imposed sanctions and other enforcement actions authorized by law, including the death penalty, but do not include sanctions that defeat the object and purpose of the Convention Against Torture to prohibit torture. This interpretation is in keeping with how the “lawful sanctions” clause has been interpreted by the UN treaty body charged with monitoring application of the Convention against Torture. For example, after expressing concern about “[t]he nature of some criminal sanctions, in particular flogging and amputation” in reviewing the periodic report of Yemen in...

(such as the Geneva, Genocide, and Torture Conventions, as well as customary international law) or through the operation of domestic law and established policy. And the model’s calibration of extraterritorial obligations in terms of a state’s actual capacity to honor them offers significant promise. It offers a fresh theoretical framework for thinking about extraterritorial application of human rights treaties that is logical and pragmatic, that finds meaningful support in the ICCPR’s language, history, and subsequent state practice, and that could help alleviate the United States’ isolation on the extraterritorial application...

for example. But even with such principles in hand, states would still need to exercise practical judgment. It is hard to conceive how such judgment could be made subject to law. Some powerful states with substantial capacity to contribute to extraterritorial protection efforts have expressed discomfort the ILC’s framing of the extraterritorial obligation to prevent crimes against humanity for similar reasons. In 2019, the United Kingdom called for more detail on what the obligation actually requires, worrying that, if it is indeed akin to the broad duty established in the...

am not Cuba sanctions law expert, so it is possible I am missing something. Since the bulk of the Cuba sanctions are found in regulations issued by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control pursuant to the Trading with the Enemy Act, it would seem like President Obama could indeed lift those sanctions by simply withdrawing those regulations. The TWEA has never been read to require sanctions, and President Carter lifted similar sanctions on China without Congress in 1979. On the other hand, Congress has also enacted two Cuba-specific...

there is the same kind of Article II tradition in this area. The closest analogy I can come up with off the top of my head is the normalization of relations with China in 1979, which lifted sanctions, but did not involve a comprehensive Article II treaty. On the other hand, the sanctions regime for Iran is enormously complex and much more extensive than the pre-1979 China sanctions. Many of the Iran sanctions may not be waiveable by the President, and the new sanctions bill will certainly make most of...