A/HRC/30/45
be difficult to distinguish between some “smart” unilateral coercive measures and
comprehensive ones, as will be exemplified hereunder.
17.
Whether comprehensive or “smart”, unilateral coercive measures are hard to
reconcile with the Declaration on the Right to Development and in particular with its article
3, which stipulates that “States have the duty to cooperate with each other in ensuring
development and eliminating obstacles to development”.
18.
In summary, any unilateral coercive measure imposed on a country necessarily runs
counter to some provisions of the International Bill of Human Rights or peremptory norms
and other provisions of customary law. Such measures entail, to different degrees, adverse
consequences on the enjoyment of the human rights of innocent people. There is a very
wide range of human rights that might be involved, including political, economic, social
and cultural rights. The focus of impact assessment should remain on the rights to life,
health and medical care, an adequate standard of living, food, education, work, housing and
development. The justification provided for unilateral coercive measures is the claim that
they aim at the improvement of the human rights situation overall in the targeted country.
Thus, it is said that the cost in human rights terms of the coercive measure is justified by the
greater human rights benefits expected to accrue from such measures. It remains to be seen
whether human rights lend themselves to this kind of calculus.
19.
A variety of expressions are being used to refer to unilateral coercive measures.
Some refer to them as “sanctions”, others as “restrictive measures” and others still use them
interchangeably or jointly as, say, “restrictive measures (sanctions)”. The term “restrictive
measure” does not carry the same ethical overtones of punishment as “sanctions”.
However, it eschews the mention of “unilateral”, which itself raises the issue of legitimacy
of such measures since what is unilateral can, in given circumstances, lack legitimacy. The
term “unilateral coercive measures”, though more cumbersome, has the advantage of not
prejudging any of the aforementioned, rather controversial, issues.
20.
The Special Rapporteur will use the expression “source countries” when referring to
countries initiating and applying unilateral coercive measures and the expression “target
countries” to mean countries that have been targeted by unilateral coercive measures,
whether the latter themselves are comprehensive or targeted at a particular sector, area or at
specific persons.
21.
It may be said that the “sanctioning” authority, in order to be legitimate, should have
jurisdiction over the “sanctioned” State. It might have to be mandated by the international
community to uphold international standards and coerce “deviant” States into conforming
to an international agreement or to internationally accepted norms of conduct. It might
even, in certain circumstances, be entitled to do so of its own accord. Usually the Security
Council has the central authority in this regard. Yet Article 41 of the Charter of the United
Nations refers to coercive measures taken by the Council simply as “measures” rather than
“sanctions”. To suggest that States can impose “sanctions” on other States while the
Security Council itself only imposes “measures” that truly deserve to be called “multilateral
sanctions”, and which will be referred to as such by the present mandate, implies that
decisions of States that impose unilateral coercive measures have at least the same legal
cogency as those of the Security Council. It also implies that there is a hierarchy among
States, between the “sanctioning” and the “sanctioned”. This runs counter to the spirit of
the Charter and in particular to Article 2(1), which refers to the sovereign equality of all the
States Members of the United Nations.
22.
Unilateral coercive measures are said to be “extraterritorial” because they are
initiated by a country or group of countries and imposed outside their national territory or
jurisdiction. The laws imposing them may have extraterritorial effect not only on targeted
countries but also on third countries in a manner that will coerce the latter to also apply the
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