POLITICS: Task Force Wants to Target UN Sanctions

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 12 1997 (IPS) - A high-level probe into all aspects of United Nations sanctions has faulted the U.N. Security Council for imposing economic embargoes without the means of policing the results.

“We need smarter sanctions. We need targeted sanctions,” says Pakistani politician Moeen Qureshi, a member of the Task Force.

Qureshi told reporters that sanctions have now become the Security Council’s weapon of choice in seeking to enforce its decisions. Although they are useful, he said, they invariably tend to be very broad penalising the ruled more than the rulers.

“Broad-based sanctions and trade embargoes, in particular, are regularly criticised for causing greater harm to the general population than to those political elites who control allocation decisions and reserves of wealth and scarce commodities,” the Task Force said.

Former British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington headed the 10- member Task Force which has called for significant changes in Security Council procedures and in the way Council-authorised economic sanctions and military actions are carried out.

Other members of the probe included former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, Vice President of the European Parliament Jean-Pierre Cot, former U.S. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, Ambassador Celso Amorim of Brazil and former Ugandan Foreign Minister Olara Otunnu.

“Recent events in Iraq remind us of how difficult these questions are,” Carrington noted, “and of how urgent it is that nations begin to grapple with them seriously.”

The 50-page study, sponsored by the New York-based U.N. Association of USA (UNA-USA), recommends that the 15-nation Security Council be given the support of an information and analysis team to provide all Council members with independent assessments of developments in crisis situations and of policy options.

Since the creation of the world body in 1945, the Security Council has imposed embargoes on 12 countries: the former Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Liberia, Haiti, Angola, Rwanda, Sudan and Sierra Leone. Sanctions have been lifted in in only four of these countries – Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia.

The Task Force says that it is not surprising that Security Council-imposed sanctions have had a mixed record in recent years. “Despite some failures, however, there have been several encouraging cases,” the study notes.

The maintenance of military and economic sanctions on Iraq – while contributing to the deterioration of social and economic conditions – has been one of the factors compelling Baghdad to accede to the U.N.’s conduct of unprecedented inspections aimed at preventing Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction.

Sanctions also helped restore a democratic regime in Haiti, according to the Task Force. But the most spectacular success was in the former Yugoslavia where sanctions forced Serbian President Milosevic to join the peace negotiations that led to the Dayton Accords.

The Task Force also points out that the threat of sanctions, along with the provision of some tempting carrots, may have helped convince North Korea to put its nuclear weapons programme on hold.

But selective sanctions on Libya have not been universally respected and have not compelled the government there to relinquish the suspects in the bombing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

“Sanctions need to be tailored to fit the target and the circumstances,” the study notes. But it points out that there are no guarantees that targeted sanctions will work, or work quickly.

The Task Force says the Security Council should be clear and specific about what actions the target needs to take so that the lifting of sanctions can be considered. The Council should, when appropriate, give an indicative timeframe within which it expects compliance and after which it consider taking further stpes, modifying the sanctions, of lifting them altogether.

The study has recommended that the Security Council should seek to shape each sanctions package in a way that brings maximum pressure to bear on national decision makers in the target country, while avoiding unnecessary humanitarian consequences for the population as a whole.

The Security Council has also been asked to develop means and methods for engaging in consultations with and gaining information from a broad range of intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) concerning both the design and implementation of sanctions resolutions.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has been asked to convene a study of ways to ensure the swift and effective implementation of financial sanctions, such as freezing personal and national assets.

Other recomendations by the Task Force included a call for closer working relationships between the United Nations and regional and sub-regional organisations, and greater efforts to build their capacities for conflict resolution and peacekeeping.