Unilateral economic “sanctions” in the international legal order: anything goes or necessary limits to the repressive atavisms of a pre-community international society?

Abstract

The article analyzes unilateral economic “sanctions” within the framework of the principle of non-intervention and in relation to possible limits in international human rights law. In connection with this debate, it argues whether the state practice with these unilateral actions poses any contradiction with the functions attributed to the United Nations Security Council in the process of communitarization of international society after the end of the Second World War. The impact of a majority position of States in the United Nations frameworks on economic “sanctions” on the consolidation of norms of customary international law, or on their eventual birth, is also analyzed. Finally, the possible limits in international human rights law to these unilateral practices are addressed when they have a general and indiscriminate reach among the population of a State.