United Nations Sanctions after Iraq: Looking Back to See Ahead

I. INTRODUCTION On May 22, 2003, the United Nations Security Council voted 14-0 to adopt a US-sponsored resolution advocating the formal lifting of UN economic sanctions against Iraq. These measures, imposed with US sponsorship when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, placed restrictions on Iraq's oil imports and put the expenditure of its oil revenues under UN control. Removal of these sanction measures was conditioned on the destruction by Saddam Hussein of all weapons of mass destruction, a situation rendered moot by the US military victory and occupation of Iraq during March-April 2003. The effort by the Bush administration to end the UN sanctions regime was intended to allow Iraq's extensive oil resources to be used to foster and facilitate that country's economic, political, and social recovery from the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as to finance reconstruction from the 2003 Iraqi war.1 The UN's thirteen-year-old sanctions regime against Iraq marked a watershed development in the application of economic coercion by the United Nations. These measures-the most extensive and most prolonged ever applied by the United Nations-became the most economically devastating on their targeted citizenry, as well as the most politically controversial among human rights advocates. Given these circumstances, it is useful to assess both the impact of these sanctions on the economy and society of Iraq and the lawfulness of Security Council sanctions application in light of international humanitarian law. From this analysis we should be able to gauge what implications flow from the Iraq sanctions operation for future UN sanctions as instruments of UN peacekeeping. To these ends, Part II of this article briefly examines the nature, means, and processes of UN sanctions operations. The Iraqi sanctions experience is then assessed in Part III, to determine its economic and social impacts on the people and government of Iraq. Part IV critically distills and evaluates the lessons to be drawn from the Iraqi sanctions experience. Finally, Part V proffers some conclusions for critical reflection. II. UN SANCTIONS IN PERSPECTIVE A. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS Sanctions adopted by the Security Council are instruments of international politics. They are neither trade policies nor transnational business practices. UN sanctions entail a combination of mandatory boycotts where states refuse to buy goods from the target state and embargoes where states refuse to sell goods to a target state. The Security Council directs sanctions operations through special sanctions committees; the entire UN membership imposes sanctions against a target government. Such multilateral economic injunctions operate between states, rather than between individuals, and they are ordered by the UN Security Council against the will of the target state. The ambition of such sanctions is unmistakable: to prevent the exchange of goods, services, or persons across national borders, thereby isolating the target state from international commerce. While the word "sanction" is sometimes applied to various commercial policies between states, UN sanctions differ from standard trade policies in that they amount to forceful measures that are internationally legitimized. Unlike diplomatic negotiations, Security Council-mandated measures against states are not left to voluntary or consensual agreement among member states. A declaration by the Security Council of a sanctions decision legally obligates all member governments of the UN to impose and enforce the stipulated restrictive measures against a targeted state. In this regard, UN sanctions more closely resemble mandatory economic coercion than tools of international trade or diplomacy. Moreover, these sanctions operations should not be confused with international trade wars, in which nations raise or lower prices for exchanged goods in reprisal to punish an adversary. Nor are the sanctions a form of economic warfare, wherein the entire economy or designated economic sectors of a state are targeted for destruction in order to achieve military aims. …