A/HRC/39/54 (b) Individuals and legal persons and entities targeted (by sanctions) but found not to have been given a chance to benefit from due process (see A/HRC/36/44, annex, appendix II, para. 13 (d)). 21. The starting point here is that a number of sanctions regimes operate in such a way that the right to a fair trial of those affected is effectively suspended. As previously stressed by the Special Rapporteur, the availability of judicial review for obtaining remedies and redress for unilateral coercive measures is a requirement that stems from a number of multilateral human rights instruments, to which the main users of sanctions are parties. A right to a remedy for victims of violations of international human rights law is affirmed, for example, in articles 8 and 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 39 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, article 6 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and article 14 of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (see A/71/287, paras. 22–27). 22. The right to a fair trial is enshrined in article 14 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights providing that, in the determination of any criminal charges against individuals or of their rights and obligations in a civil suit of law, everyone is entitled to a fair and impartial hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law. It is not disputed that sanctions affect at least the rights and obligations of the targets and thus trigger the “civil” component of article 14 (1). That is irrespective of the question as to whether sanctions, such as the freezing of assets, for example, constitute a sanction belonging to the criminal sphere. 12 23. What should also be emphasized is that the lack of effective mechanisms for the judicial review of unilateral sanctions measures, and remedies and redress for victims, as appropriate, amount to a denial of justice. 13 That statement should be uncontroversial. It has indeed been observed that most legal systems today recognize the importance of safeguarding the right of access to independent bodies that can afford a fair hearing to claimants who assert an arguable claim that their rights have been infringed. Indeed, many writers include the element of enforceability in their definition of legal rights, because the notion of rights entails a correlative duty on the part of others to act or refrain from acting for the benefit of the rights holder. Unless a duty is somehow enforced, it risks being seen as a voluntary obligation that can be fulfilled or ignored at will.14 V. Present issues of outstanding concern A. The rise of comprehensive sanctions as economic warfare 24. The past months have witnessed increased recourse to sanctions, some of which are clearly not targeted nor intended to be “smart”, but are clearly comprehensive, as in the case of the measures introduced against the Islamic Republic of Iran. It may reasonably be argued that applying a comprehensive regime of unilateral coercive measures extending to the imposition of domestic sanctions legislation on third parties, the effects of which almost 12 13 14 On the question of whether (United Nations) sanctions amount to criminal charges, see E. de Wet, “Holding the United Nations Security Council accountable for human rights violations through domestic and regional courts: a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’?” in Jeremy Farrall and Kim Rubenstein (eds.), Sanctions, Accountability and Governance in a Globalised World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 143–168. See generally Jan Paulsson, Denial of Justice in International Law (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005); Antonio Cançado Trindade, The Access of Individuals to International Justice (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011); and Robert Kolb, La bonne foi en droit international public (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2000). See Dinah Shelton, Remedies in International Human Rights Law, p. 17. 7