NEW YORK - A UN expert today warned that the proliferation of unilateral sanctions - including against the International Criminal Court (ICC) - is eroding multilateral cooperation and weakening international institutions entrusted with accountability and justice.
"The measures targeting ICC officials, judges and prosecutors, human rights defenders and organisations and a fellow Special Rapporteur aim to intimidate, dismantle the international justice architecture and generate a chilling effect across the international system," said Zaina Jallad, Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures.
More broadly, unilateral sanctions are imposing a protracted and intergenerational 'human cost' on affected populations and crippling economies globally.
New modalities and manifestations of sanctions have emerged, creating an increasingly complex and layered architecture that is compounded by overcompliance and de-risking by private actors. The effects of these measures extend far beyond the borders of sanctioned States and often appear most acutely in humanitarian crises.
"Unilateral sanctions are being used as a tool of repression. They are undermining the conditions of life of entire populations that lack meaningful input into the political sphere that governs their implementation," Jallad said. "We must not allow sanctions to be used as a means of collective punishment or coercion of rightsholders."
The report outlines a human rights-based approach that places the experiences, perspectives and voices of affected individuals and communities at the heart of the mandate's work. It identifies eight core themes that will guide the work of the mandate, including attacks on international institutions; access to essential systems of life; overcompliance, de-risking and operation of humanitarian exemptions; effects on third States, migration and displacement; coercive conditionality; and immobilisation and confiscation of assets, property and sovereign resources, among others.
"In the absence of a principled, firm and effective response by States, the effects of unilateral sanctions will weaken the primacy of international law and further erode the international order," she said. "States must recommit to safeguarding the multilateral system and the principles of international law and cooperation on which it rests."
