CYIL vol. 7 (2016)

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ZUZANA TRÁVNÍČKOVÁ CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ
1. Term “sanctions”
The word “sanction” has several meanings; e.g. approval, decree or penalty.
Although on the national level there are no terminological issues (sanction means
usually a reaction to law violation and is used in the meaning legal consequence),
in international law we will find no definition nor any binding explanation of the
term. The UN Charter, a respected foundation of current sanction practice of the
United Nations, speaks about measures. There is also no relevant judgment of the
International Court of Justice that would shine some light on the term ‘sanctions’.
Under these circumstances, the burden of defining the term must be borne by
scholars. And their perceptions may differ.
Prof. Mohamad in his text presents at least three definitions of sanctions.6 One is by
Margaret Doxey (1972), that sanctions are “negative measures which seek to influence
conduct by threatening and, if necessary, imposing penalties for non-conformity with
law”. The second is by Nico J. Schrijver (1994) and it relates to collective or multilateral
sanctions, which are defined as “collective measures imposed by organs representing
the international community, in response to perceived unlawful or unacceptable
conduct by one of its members and meant to uphold standards of behaviour required
by international law”.7 The third explanation is provided by Prof. Mohamad, and he
deduces from Art. 39 of UNCharter that “unilateral sanctions often refer to economic
measures taken by one State to compel a change in the policy of another State”.8
There is one thing that these definitions have in common: the goal of sanctions.
All three definitions tell us that the aim of sanctions is to influence or change the
conduct of sanctioned state. Well, the strict interpretation of UN Charter definitely
leads us to such a finding (in case of threatening the international peace and security
the UN Security Council authorizes sanctions in conformity with art. 41 of the
UN Charter to eliminate such a threat), but the current sanctions practice is more
colourful.
6 Some arguments in his text relate to unilateral sanctions in general; some of them – e.g. in footnote
22 identified a quotation from the Appeal of International Progress Organisation – deal with trade
sanctions only.
7 MOHAMAD, R. (2015) on p. 73 cites SCHRIJVER, N.J. ‘The Use of Economic Sanctions by the UN
Security Council: An International Perspective’ in. HHG Post (ed), International Economic Law and
Armed Conflict (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, London, 1994) 125.
8 MOHAMAD, R. (2015) 75; As a Secretary General of AALCO (Asian-African Legal Consultative
Organization) Prof. Mohamad took the opportunity to present this narrow definition of sanctions
also by other occasions. For example, during his speech at T. M. C. Asser Instituut in the Hague on
11 July 2013 he said, that: “in international affairs means a penalty imposed against a nation to coerce
it into compliance with international law or to compel an alteration in its policies in some other respect.
Legitimacy of sanctions under international law is applicable only to ‘multilateral sanctions’ which are
applied as per Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations.” MOHAMAD, R. ‘Unilateral Sanctions
in International Law’ [2013]
Text%20-%20The%20Hague%2011%20July%202013.pdf.>, accessed 27 May 2016.