A/HRC/39/54 16. Human rights impact assessments of sanctions programmes should be conducted ex ante, that is before the measures are enacted, aim to measure the potential future effects of such measures on human rights and possibly adjust or change the sanctions regime with a view to preventing human rights violations. Ex post assessments that measure the actual impact of implemented sanctions through comparisons between the current situation and the situation before the measures were adopted are also important and monitoring should remain in place as long as the sanctions programme considered remains in force. Monitoring should seek to provide answers, inter alia, to the following questions: (a) What mitigating measures have been adopted by the duty-bearers to mitigate any negative effect foreseen by the assessment? (b) Have any human rights risks and/or impacts that were foreseen by the assessment materialized? If so, who were the affected stakeholders? Have the duty-bearers taken measures to try to mitigate the negative effects of those risks? (c) Have there been major human rights risks and/or impacts unforeseen by the assessment? If so, who were the affected stakeholders? (d) Have there been recurring grievances related to the policy intervention? If so, who were the affected stakeholders?8 17. Human rights impact assessments of sanctions regimes can be expected to play an important role in promoting accountability, offering clarity on the scope of human rights obligations and the extent to which duty-bearers have fulfilled them. Impact assessments will typically evaluate the extent to which the subject of the evaluation includes effective accountability mechanisms.9 18. It is also important that the conduct of human rights impact assessments allows for effective public participation of the populations affected by sanctions and that the information gathered be made publicly (and widely) available. 19. Effective human rights impact assessments should become a non-derogable standard in cases of sanctions imposed by groups of States or regional organizations. In 2014, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly adopted a resolution calling on all member States of the Council to ensure that the international organizations of which they were members were subject, as appropriate, to binding mechanisms to monitor their compliance with human rights norms and to ensure that their decisions were enforced. 10 They should ratify human rights instruments, where possible, and formulate clear guidelines regarding the waiver of immunity by international organizations or the limitation on the immunity they enjoy before national courts, in order to ensure that the necessary functional immunity did not shield them from scrutiny regarding, in particular, their adherence to non-derogable human rights standards.11 Judicial review and effective remedies 20. Another fundamental “accepted rule of behaviour” suggested by the Special Rapporteur is formulated as follows: mechanisms to guarantee due process and the availability of judicial review for obtaining remedies and redress for unilateral coercive measures, should be available to: (a) sanctions); 8 9 10 11 6 Impacted groups, even if non-targeted (by comprehensive or sectoral See Nordic Trust Fund and World Bank Group, “Human rights impact assessments: a review of the literature”. Ibid. Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, resolution 1979 (31 January 2014) on the accountability of international organizations. See Dinah Shelton, Remedies in International Human Rights Law (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 51.