A/HRC/39/54 equate to those of a blockade on a foreign country, amounts to using economic warfare. 15 The potentially far-reaching, adverse consequences of such actions on human rights are obvious. It has been convincingly argued that this concept of economic warfare, which is not a term of art in international law, may cover not only wartime conduct (economic methods of warfare such as belligerent blockades and the strategic bombing of factory infrastructures), but also decentralized economic (counter-) measures in peacetime, such as civilian blockades or even boycotts voluntarily undertaken by the citizens of one State against the products of another, and collective sanctions imposed by the Security Council. 16 “Decentralized” peacetime measures of economic warfare have been described as measures taken unilaterally by a State that target the economy of another State and aim to apply pressure to bring about a change in the conduct of the target. They may include an economic embargo or boycott, the reduction or withdrawal of economic aid and other restrictions in trade, such as a reduction in quotas or the freezing of the financial assets of the target State.17 25. The trend of growing recourse to comprehensive sanctions coupled with secondary sanctions is particularly questionable and raises important human rights concerns, since the measures considered, at least in some cases, amount in practice to some form of blockade and can be deemed to violate some of the most basic rules of international humanitarian law and human rights law. While comprehensive embargoes coupled with secondary sanctions do not obviously fit within the precise concept of “wartime” blockade in the meaning of international humanitarian law, 18 the (potential) similarity of their effects on the civilian populations of the countries targeted may be seen as calling for the applicability, mutatis mutandis, of the requirements of the law of armed conflict (international humanitarian law) and the principles of necessity, proportionality and discrimination to non-forcible (peacetime) economic sanctions that may amount to a blockade. 19 The principle of discrimination in the law of armed conflict refers to the sharp distinction between combatants and non-combatants (a principle also referred to as the “distinction principle”)20 and the imperative that any use of force be demonstrably necessary, proportional to the necessity, and capable of discriminating between combatants and non-combatants.21 26. Arguing that those criteria found in the law of armed conflict are not applicable (at least mutatis mutandis) to economic sanctions amounting to a de facto blockade would lead to an absurd, unacceptable outcome: civilians would then be deprived in peacetime of the protection offered in wartime by international humanitarian law against the very same kinds of measures. It is widely accepted that blockades in wartime shall not entail starvation or “collective punishment” of the populations affected, a behaviour that contradicts the rules of the law of armed conflict, especially article 33 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Fourth Geneva Convention). The safeguards of international humanitarian law have been established primarily to protect the civilian 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 8 See generally Stephen. C. Neff, “Boycott and the law of nations: economic warfare and modern international law in historical perspective”, British Yearbook of International Law vol. 59, No. 1 (1989). See V. Lowe and A. Tzanakopoulos, “Economic warfare” in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, Rüdiger Wolfrum, ed. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012). Ibid. A blockade is generally defined as a belligerent operation to prevent vessels and/or aircraft of all nations, enemy and neutral, from entering or exiting specified ports, airports, or coastal areas belonging to, occupied by, or under the control of an enemy nation. See Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, “Blockade”, in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (updated October 2015); and Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016) pp. 257–259. See W. Michael Reisman and Douglas L. Stevick, “The applicability of international law standards to United Nations economic sanctions programmes”, European Journal of International Law, vol. 9, No. 1 (1998). See Steven Haines, “The developing law of weapons, humanity, distinction, and precautions in attack” in The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Armed Conflict, Andrew Clapham and Paola Gaeta, eds. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014). See Reisman and Stevick, “The applicability of international law standards to United Nations economic sanctions programmes”.