General

[Eirik Bjorge is a Professor at the University of Bristol.] Introduction Sanctions are not an invention of the United Nations system: they predate the United Nations and have a long pedigree in the history of inter-State relations. This long pedigree is buttressed by extensive State practice which supports the unilateral right to impose such sanctions. It would therefore be incorrect to assert that only international organs such...

[Marco Fasciglione is a researcher of International Law at CNR.] Introduction According to a common belief existing among State officials and international law scholars, unilateral and extraterritorial economic sanctions would be a valuable alternative to armed conflicts. This is either because sanctions would, according to Reisman and Stevick (at 94), “reinforce public commitment to the norm that has been violated and generate a sense of civic virtue,...

[Tristan Kohl Associate is a Professor of International Economics at the University of Groningen in the Faculty of Economics and Business.] The Economics of Sanction Impositions A central question in the study of international sanctions is if, and how, sanctions alter the incentives of economic agents in the sending country to do business with agents in the sanctioned, targeted state. In this regard, the empirical...

[Stefano Palestini is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.] Imposing sanctions is a common practice in the contemporary international order.  As Erica Moret (chapter 2: 23-24) shows, since 1990, the United States and the European Union (EU) have imposed 150 and 75 sanction regimes respectively. Furthermore, more than half of EU sanctions have been imposed autonomously...

[Elin Hellquist is a researcher in the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University.] If you want to take the temperature on international relations (IR), study sanctions. Competing understandings of core IR-concepts such as sovereignty, power, legitimacy and justice are embodied in the politics of sanctions, classically described as an instrument ‘between words and wars’ (Staibano & Wallensteen 2005). Moreover, the empirical universe of sanctions is an...

[Larissa van den Herik is a professor of public international law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University.] As the balance of world power is tilting east with China’s economic might and its increased international political power ending US hegemony, it is said that we are entering into a new geoeconomic world order in which economic instruments follow the logic of conflict rather than...

[Alexandra Hofer (a.s.hofer@uu.nl) is an assistant professor in public international law at Utrecht University and affiliated researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI).] Note to reader: most of this piece was written on Friday, 25 February. Given the speed at which the situation is evolving it may not be up-to-date at the time of publication, though it tried to take into account some of the additional measures...

[Jennifer Trahan is Convenor of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression, and Clinical Professor at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs.] Let us be clear why the United Nations is largely paralyzed in the face of one of the clearest cases of aggression since 1939:  it is because of the veto power of a permanent member of the UN Security...

Call for Papers Call for Papers - Young Researchers’ Workshop ‘European Human Rights Protection: Twenty years from now': On the 16th of September 2022, the Academy for European Human Rights Protection at the University of Cologne will be opened officially. This joyous occasion will be marked with a colloquy bringing together judges from the European Court of Human Rights, the European Court,...

[Ryan Thoreson is a researcher in the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.] For most children, nationality is clear-cut. Most countries pass nationality down to children who are born to at least one of their citizens, while a smaller number grant nationality to any child born on their territory. But citizenship laws are by nature more exclusive than inclusive. For children whose parentage or family structure...

[Amirali Alavi is the Chair of the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims’ Legal Committee. Irwin Cotler is Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR), an Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, and former Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada. Yonah Diamond is an international human rights lawyer with the RWCHR.] On January 8, the...

[Nidhi Singh works as a Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Fellow at the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) and as a part-time researcher with the International Platform for Corporate Liability.] In June 2014, the UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 26/9 which decided to establish an international, legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect...