Research On The Regulation Of U.S. Unilateral Economic Sanctions From The Perspective Of Human Rights

In order to consolidate its world hegemony,the United States took advantage of its powerful position,bypassed the multilateral mechanism of the United Nations and wielded the economic sanctions stick all over the world,becoming the country that has used the most economic sanctions since the 20 th century.According to the scope of sanctions,the U.S.unilateral economic sanctions can be divided into comprehensive sanctions and targeted sanctions.Comprehensive sanctions target the entire sanctioned country without discrimination,while targeted sanctions target specific individuals or entities.Comprehensive sanctions have led to a sharp deterioration in the economy of the sanctioned countries,and people’s basic livelihood cannot be guaranteed,resulting in a serious humanitarian crisis.Targeted sanctions did not consider the protection of individual rights from the beginning,and at the same time,there was a trend of backtracking to comprehensive sanctions,which continued to cause humanitarian concerns.The negative impact of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions on human rights has attracted the condemnation of the international community,the voice of opposing U.S.unilateral economic sanctions is gradually rising,and measures have been taken to resist it.However,the reality is that American unilateralism prevails,the implementation of unilateral economic sanctions is increasing,and the regulatory measures adopted by the international community are facing various difficulties,with little effect.From the perspective of human rights law,through the analysis of typical sanctions cases imposed by the United States,this dissertation conducts a humanitarian review of the U.S.comprehensive sanctions,explores the violation of human rights by targeted sanctions,studies the measures adopted by the international community to regulate U.S.unilateral economic sanctions from three levels: the United Nations,the European Union and countries,and analyzes the difficulties faced by the current regulatory measures and the future improvement direction,expecting to reach a consensus on the human rights standards for regulating U.S.unilateral economic sanctions and promote the regulation of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions in the United Nations framework.This dissertation consists of six chapters,besides the introduction and conclusion,with about 227000 words.The first chapter provides an overview of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions.It includes the basic concept and types of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions,the implementation of sanctions in different historical stages and its development characteristics.Unilateral economic sanctions are considered to be an act made by a country only considering its own interests,with the purpose to force the sanctioned country to make concessions or change its policies.They are regarded as one of the obstacles to international cooperation,peace and the international legal order.The United States frequently resorted to unilateral economic sanctions when pursuing its foreign policy.According to the object,scope and means of implementation,the U.S.unilateral economic sanctions can be divided into primary sanctions and secondary sanctions,comprehensive sanctions and targeted sanctions,trade sanctions and financial sanctions.The implementation of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions is deeply affected by the international situation,its own strength and foreign policy objectives.It can be roughly divided into three stages: before,during and after the Cold War.It has gone through the development process from being non-military countermeasure and economic intervention measures to diplomatic economic coercive measures to implement U.S.foreign policy.Since the Cold War,the U.S.unilateral economic sanctions have been expanding,and the subject and target of sanctions have been expanding as well.The implementation of secondary sanctions has caused huge economic losses to third countries,which has been strongly opposed by the international community.In the process of implementing sanctions,the United States has shifted from comprehensive sanctions to more use of targeted sanctions out of so-called humanitarian considerations,but its real purpose was to improve the efficiency of economic sanctions under the cloak of “Humanitarianism”.The United States circumvented the multilateral mechanism of the United Nations and wantonly imposed unilateral economic sanctions,which seriously impacted the international law order and was the concentrated embodiment of American unilateralism and hegemonism.The second chapter discusses the humanitarian crisis caused by U.S.comprehensive sanctions.The purpose behind the comprehensive sanctions is to exert economic pressure on the people of the sanctioned country,leading them to exert pressure on the government of the sanctioned country,thus coercing the government of the sanctioned country to change its policy.By means of economic blockade or trade embargo,the United States indiscriminately imposes sanctions on the ordinary people of the sanctioned countries,resulting in a humanitarian crisis that is no different from the impact of war,which violates the basic principles of “distinction” and “proportionality” in Just Sanctions theory.With the help of the framework of “humanitarian implications assessment of sanctions” of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,this chapter makes a humanitarian assessment of the cases of U.S.sanctions against Cuba and Iran,and holds that U.S.comprehensive sanctions have led to the sharp deterioration of the economic situation of the sanctioned countries and violated the basic human rights of the people in the sanctioned countries,such as the right to health,the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to education.Humanitarian exception and humanitarian aid are both remedial measures in economic sanctions,aiming at alleviating humanitarian crises.The United States has stipulated humanitarian exceptions in its sanctions policy and set up the “license” system as the approval procedure,but the scope of humanitarian exceptions is too limited,the license application procedure is complicated and expensive,which makes it difficult to alleviate the humanitarian crisis.In the process of implementing comprehensive sanctions,the United States frequently applied sanctions extraterritorially,forbidding economic and trade exchanges between third countries and the sanctioned countries,which seriously hindered the implementation of humanitarian aid and aggravated the humanitarian crisis of the sanctioned countries.The United States advocates the idea that human rights take precedence over sovereignty and human rights have no borders.The economic aid originally with humanitarian color is conditional on a country’s human rights situation,and it has evolved into a bargaining chip for the United States to implement economic sanctions in exchange for concessions on certain political issues of the sanctioned country;human rights sanctions with the goal of “promoting” human rights have caused more massive human rights violations.Aid sanctions and human rights sanctions are important means for the United States to interfere in other countries’ affairs,and humanitarian activities have been branded politically and evolved into humanitarian intervention.The third chapter discusses the violation of human rights by U.S.targeted sanctions.From the end of the 20 th century to the beginning of the 21 st century,with the reflection of the international community on the humanitarian impact of comprehensive sanctions,more targeted and selective sanctions mainly aimed at individuals and entities came into being.In line with the international situation,the United States has also turned to targeted sanctions when imposing economic sanctions.According to the original intention of targeted sanctions,they should be more humane than comprehensive sanctions,but the reality is that targeted sanctions have not considered the protection of individual rights from the beginning,and with the gradual expansion of the scope of targeted sanctions,they continue to cause humanitarian crisis.Judging from the implementation content and results,targeted sanctions generally take measures such as asset freeze and travel ban,which adversely affect the property and personal freedom of individuals and entities,and at the same time affect the reputation of the sanctioned object.In terms of implementation procedures,the United States will not notify the sanctioned object before designation,and will not allow them to defense and submit evidence.The sanctioned object will be “convicted” without trial.Although the United States has set up the delisting procedure as a relief mechanism,it is difficult for non-U.S.individuals or entities to successfully delist,which makes it difficult for individuals or entities to obtain effective relief after their rights are damaged.Although the U.S.targeted sanctions are political and administrative in nature,they have used quasi-judicial means and has affected personal freedom and economy of the sanctioned object,which obviously does not meet the requirements of due process.As the effectiveness of targeted sanctions did not achieve the expected goal,the United States gradually expanded the scope of targeted sanctions and implemented sectoral sanctions against pillar industries in specific countries.Targeted sanctions began to go back to comprehensive sanctions,and also faced the problem of proportionality.The severity and negative impact of sectoral sanctions are no different from that of comprehensive sanctions,and targeted sanctions have failed to put an end to the negative humanitarian impact caused by comprehensive sanctions.The fourth chapter analyses the measures taken by the United Nations,the European Union and other countries to regulate U.S.unilateral economic sanctions.At the United Nations level,focusing on the topics of “Human Rights and Unilateral Coercive Measures”,“Unilateral Economic Measures as a Means of Political and Economic Coercion against Developing Countries” and “Necessity of Ending the Economic,Commercial and Financial Embargo Imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”,and by means of resolutions,reports of the Secretary General,thematic research reports,regular panel discussions,Special Rapporteur procedure and declaration,the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council condemn the negative impact of unilateral economic sanctions on human rights,expect to introduce the human rights and humanitarian issues involved in sanctions into international dialogue,and call for the cessation of taking or implementation of any unilateral coercive measures that are inconsistent with international law,international human rights law,international humanitarian law,the Charter of the United Nations and norms and principles governing peaceful relations among states.The EU has used the rules of international law,the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and the United Nations to resist the extraterritorial application of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions.However,the multilateral approach has had little effect.The EU readjusted its strategy and adopted the way of formulating “blocking statutes” to counter the extraterritorial effect of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions,which has played a very important role in political declaration and diplomacy,and at the same time effectively safeguarded the economic interests of EU countries.At the national level,the United Kingdom,Canada,Australia,Mexico,Russia,China and other countries have also adopted the mode of “blocking statutes”,and successfully formulated laws and regulations to counter U.S.unilateral economic sanctions,which provides a legal basis for domestic enterprises to deal with sanctions and anti-sanctions encountered in their business activities.International,regional and national countermeasures constitute a systematic framework for the international community to regulate U.S.unilateral economic sanctions.The fifth chapter analyzes the difficulties faced by the international community in regulating the U.S.unilateral economic sanctions.In the face of the international community’s resistance to U.S.unilateral economic sanctions,the United States not only did not flinch,but increased the intensity of economic sanctions.The regulatory measures cannot stop the United States,which exposes the problems existing in the current regulatory measures.The organizational structure and nature of the United Nations determine that the UN General Assembly has no legislative power,so the resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on regulating unilateral economic sanctions are not legally binding,and the effectiveness of regulation is greatly reduced.Due to the conflict of interests among major powers,the UN General Assembly will propose to launch economic sanctions when the sanctions mechanism of the Security Council is out of balance,which leads to the contradictory position of the UN General Assembly on both recommending and condemning economic sanctions.At the same time,the sanctions mechanism of the Security Council is often used by the United States to strengthen economic sanctions,which weakens the effectiveness of the United Nations in regulating unilateral economic sanctions.On the EU side,the changes of EU’s own structure,system construction,overall strength and international diplomatic background have prompted the EU’s attitude towards U.S.extraterritorial economic sanctions to gradually ease from the initial strong resistance,and it has shown a trend of cooperation with the United States on the issue of economic sanctions.The EU blocking regulation relies on the implementation of Member States,and there are differences in the applicable standards of the blocking regulation among Member States.In addition,the Member States are easy to be influenced by American lobbying,which will inevitably erode the effectiveness of the blocking regulation.At the national level,in the face of the judicial strength of the United States,it is difficult for countries to introduce blocking statutes in judicial practice.The main manifestations are as follows: because of the lack of implementation history of blocking statutes and the wide range of blocking objects,American judicial institutions do not recognize blocking statutes in litigation;The blocking statutes gives the sanctioned domestic private subjects the right to claim damages.However,in reality,it is difficult for private subjects to bring a lawsuit in their own courts against the sanctions imposed by foreign governments to seek relief.The sixth chapter concludes with future prospect of regulating U.S.unilateral economic sanctions under the framework of the United Nations.The regulation of U.S.unilateral economic sanctions cannot be achieved overnight.The urgent problem to be solved is how to regulate and restrict the use of unilateral economic sanctions.In the future,we should give full play to the coordinating role of the United Nations in international affairs and regulate U.S.unilateral economic sanctions under the framework of the United Nations.Firstly,strengthen the cooperation between the UN human rights institutions and international and regional organizations,establish a networking cooperation mechanism composed of the United Nations,regional organizations and various countries,promote the formal legal source of United Nations resolutions regulating unilateral economic sanctions,so as to establish an international consensus in the international community to resist U.S.unilateral economic sanctions.Secondly,clarify the human rights obligations of the countries that initiated sanctions,set up a human rights impact assessment mechanism of sanctions,establishing an international consensus on the minimum human rights protections which must be applied to the use of unilateral economic sanctions.Thirdly,the United Nations should incorporate unilateral economic sanctions into the multilateral mechanism of the United Nations,with reference to the sanctions mechanism of the Security Council,to promote the establishment of a mechanism to review the legitimacy of unilateral economic sanctions from four aspects:improving the humanitarian exception mechanism,strengthening the sanctions monitoring and review system,setting up an independent complaint mechanism and an assistance mechanism for the economic impact on third countries,so as to strengthen the legal binding force of regulatory measures and smooth the judicial relief channels for victims.Finally,the unilateralism contained in unilateral economic sanctions is a challenge to the multilateral mechanism of the United Nations.In the future,we should maintain the multilateral trading system with WTO as the core,uphold the international legal order of sovereign equality,non-interference in internal affairs and settlement of international disputes through consultation and negotiation advocated by the Charter of the United Nations,and consolidate the collective security mechanism with the United Nations as the core,can we truly resist the impact of American unilateralism.