A/HRC/30/45 entry of the Security Council into the fray of sanctions, imposing them first on Southern Rhodesia in 1966 and then on South Africa a decade later at the initiative of developing countries. The impact of the latter on the enjoyment of human rights of the target population was relatively limited because the measures were circumvented by the source countries themselves. 27. Except for the cases of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa under apartheid, most recent unilateral coercive measures before1975 were implemented in the context of the East-West ideological rivalry. Then came the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which, in its principle VI, expressed the resolve of the signatories to put an end to autonomous policies of coercive measures. According to that principle, the parties to the Treaty “will likewise in all circumstances refrain from any other act of … economic or other coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by another participating State of the rights inherent to sovereignty”. Experience thereafter did not live up to expectations as unilateral coercive measures were redeployed in the direction of developing countries and then escalated again inter alia between the West and the Russian Federation as a result of tension on Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. 28. Most current unilateral coercive measures have been imposed at great cost, in terms of the human rights of the poorest and most vulnerable groups, by developed countries on developing countries. There are a few examples of the reverse situation, such as the Arab oil embargo of 1973 against Western States in response to the position the latter took during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. There are also cases of developing countries imposing unilateral coercive measures on neighbouring States for short periods of time. B. Current trends 29. Observed trends do not point to advanced countries giving up the resort to unilateral coercive measures, much to the contrary. This is not to say, however, that the situation has remained static. The Security Council has given up resorting to comprehensive sanctions since 1994, when it last imposed them on Haiti. Following this example, source countries have generally been moving away from comprehensive sanctions to resort rather to “smart” sanctions. These are focused on a particular territory within a target country, on a specific activity, for example, non-proliferation or on a particular category of traded goods, such as the arms trade or the commodity trade. There is also increasing resort to “smart” sanctions that target natural or corporate persons on the basis of their supposed involvement in policy decisions of their State that are challenged by the country or group of countries initiating the unilateral coercive measures. A corpus of legal rules has been devised to redress the excesses of such measures and to submit their use to certain conditions while introducing some measure of due process and independent assessment to gauge the impact of such measures on human rights. This is a positive evolution. It tends to limit the collateral damage of such measures on unintended groups and therefore deserves to be welcomed. 30. The evolution has not been homogeneous in source countries. There is therefore a need to review the progress achieved in different source countries and to consider the possibility of promoting the “best practices” of some such countries or groups thereof to the benefit of others as a step toward the elaboration of “next practices”. 31. In reality, however, it is not always easy to translate good intentions in the capitals of advanced countries into measures that safeguard human rights in the day-to-day life of remote communities in the developing world. Thus, the introduction of financial coercive measures such as a ban on the use of international interbank financial telecommunications or a measure undermining the principle of immunity of a central bank’s assets can, because of their indiscriminate character, be tantamount to the reintroduction of comprehensive sanctions. Likewise, the superimposition of targeted unilateral coercive measures on 8