Sanctions in International Law: the Case of Russia and Beyond

Yeah.

I.

Yeah.

Hello.Good afternoon colleagues really to have you here.

And many thanks to Professor Leila for actually accepting my invitation.

Who's going to speak to us on the of sanctions and interational economic law.

This is a very interesting topic because there's very little that has been commented in public space in the context of scholarship.There have been issues which are continuously discussed here, on and on we see a lot of discussion related to the economic aspect of sanctions.

So where do sanctions actually start?

I was reading something from Andrea's you got, which was written about three decades ago.

There's a wonderful statement that he has made on sanctions stand somewhere between comminiques and combat, right?

Now, that's such a wide statement, but then it encompasses everything.

That's what we discussed about sanctions, you know, in economic law.

And I myself, I'm very curious to hear from Professor Choukroune today.

So can you actually begin with asking Professor Choukroune to share her screen and then probably to get all of them back with our own questions?

Thank you so much.

And we look forward to hearing.

Fantastic, Rahmani.

Thank you so much.

Now you can see my screen properly, can you?

You can.

All right.

Yes.

That's perfect then.

Thank you.

So we're going to address the question of the sanctions in international economic law beyond the case of Russia, as you understood, Russia is very much in the news, but there is obviously more to say from an international law perspective.

First of all, let me thank the organisers of this conference in particular, Dr. Srinivas, a going to Ramallah is a must, I guess, about be busy and all the students who are supporting this initiative.

As I said, it's a very great pleasure to have such an international audience, from South Asian University, but also from the UK.

I've seen some of my colleagues from Portsmouth and I think from elsewhere in the world, wherever you are in the world, thank you very much.

Very good afternoon.

Good evening.

Good morning.

Let's start without further ado.

I'd like to start with some general remarks.

International economics law is quite technical.

As you all know, we talk about subsidies, we talk about differential treatment, we talk about investment, but it's also extremely political.

Sanctions are actually providing us with the political nature, showing us the political nature of international economic law.

They are the expression of an economic control for political ends.

Trade sanctions are a subcategory with economic sanctions, which include financial instruments in addition to foreign policy tools, right?

Or in addition to foreign policy tools.

This topic sanctions tend to be quite marginalised in international economic law scholarship.

Why is that?

Precisely because it's political, precisely because most international economic law scholars have the very technical approach to international law as you understood This is not my approach.

I'm technical, but I'm also quite political and jurisprudential.

The recent US led trade war, Washington's sanctions against Iran.

The WTO supported U.S.

retaliatory action in reaction to the European subsidies to the aeronautical giant firm Airbus and naturally today sanctions against Russia.

All these sanctions are showing the need to approach the issue of economic sanctions in an interdisciplinary fashion.

Sanctions are indeed at the crossroads between economic warfare and international regulation.

You've seen the news.

This was this morning, India Today.

After some talks, US and France are to strengthen sanctions against Russia.

So Russia at the moment is the most sanctioned country of the word.

For the reasons that you could imagine.

However, sanctions are absolutely not new.

They've been used and sometimes abused in international law since the very beginning, probably of international law and its institutionalisation wirh the Creation, for instance, of the League of Nations.

We are in 1935 and the League of Nations, in response to Italy's invasion of Abyssinia now Ethiopia, questioned the very credibility of the international organisation.

At the time, the league limposed limited sanctions against Italy and debated the possibility of an embargo on oil shipments.

Again, nothing new.

Italy ignored the sanctions, then quit the league and managed to strike deals with Britain and France while keeping control of the annexed territory.

So if you ask me what the sanctions at that time worked, you have a response.

The grave failure of multilateralism was later addressed by the United Nations in Chapter seven action with respect to threats to the peace breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.

Economic sanctions can be imposed by an international organisation based on the multilateral origninal treaty, the UN, the European Union.

But they can also be taken, as you've probably noticed recently, unilaterally by an act of state.

For example, American sanctions against Russia.

These are generally seen as contrary to international law and highly debated.

And there is maybe a subcategory which we are not going to address today because they are not really related to international law.

But what about what I call private sanctions?

Think out all the major national companies at the moment, which are somehow taking measures.

Do whether we can call them sanctions against Russia in stopping their services.

In closing their shops.

So what is done?

Is this really efficient?

Is it simply human rights washing?

This is something we have to have in mind as well.

Is there a universal definition of sanction?

Actually, no.

And there is no international body monitoring this practise, either.

I can provide you with a definition or a tentative definition.

An economic sanction can be defined as a measure of coercion of an economic nature as opposed to diplomatic or military means taken by states either collectively or individually in reaction to another state, policy or practice in order to produce a significant change of this policy or practice, in order in the present context to introduce the context of war or possibly to stop this war.

But the legality, the legitimacy and the effectiveness of sanctions are often blurred and subject to multiple interpretations.

The United Nations Security Council is at the very centre of the collective sanctions edifice with, as I mentioned before, it's Chapter seven actions with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of oppression.

And precisely its article 39 and 41.

There is indeed a clear procedure to be followed.

First, the determination of the existence of any threat to peace, breach of peace or act of aggression.

That's the famous article 39.

Then the decision to resort to measures not involving the use of armed force.

That's the Article 41.

Complete or partial interruption of economic relation and of rail, sea, air to telegraphic radio and other means of communications and the severance of diplomatic relations.

So you have a complete toolkit, so to speak.

Sanctions are not listed as such, but the allusion to sanctions is pretty clear complete or partial interruption of economic relations, for instance.

So article39 and 41 of the United Nations charter that you have here and I'm sure you're pretty familiar with.

If you move on since 1966,.

The Security Council has established about 30 regimes of sanctions in southern Rhodesia, South Africa, the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Iraq, Angola, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libéria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Sudan, Lebanon, Korea, the Democratic Republic of Korea, Iran, Libya, Guinea-Bissau, the Central African Republic, Yemen, South Sudan, Mali, you name it, as well as recently the Islamic State of Iraq and of course, against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

These sanctions have taken a very large variety of shapes, from trade missions to arms embargo, financial restrictions, travel bans or community access restrictions.

However, the U.N.

always insists on the idea that these sanctions cannot operate in a vacuum, but should rather be seen as part of a larger effort to restore peace and security.

The very aims of the United Nations charter.

They also argue, probably less convincingly, that contrary to this assumption that sanctions are't punative to many regimes are designed to support governments and regions working towards peaceful transition.

Actually, yes, we are going to discuss the harmful effects of sanctions has long been demonstrated while the efficacy remains to be proven.

Today, we have about 40 programmes of sanctions in place in the world.

Each of them is administrated by sanction committee chaired by a non permanent member of the Security Council.

There are 10 monitoring groups that support the work of about 11 of the 14 sanction committees.

Everybody is quite aware of the controversial nature of these sanctions, and the U.N.

has put in place a system of monitoring with an ombudsperson since 2015 and the appointment by the Human Rights Council of the Special Rapporteur on I call the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures.

You see the difference here.

We're not talking about the U.N.

collective sanction, but the unilateral one.

So it's a way to approach dissension in a relatively clever manner.

As a regional level as well sanctions are, for example, one of the European Union's tools for the promotion of its common and foreign security policy.

Which consists, as well as the United Nations Charter in supporting peace, democracy and the respect for the rule of law, human rights and international law.

The Council of the EU is in charge of sanctions related to decisions and all the relevant legal acts published in the Journal of the EU.

These sanctions can target the government, but also private entities, companies, individuals or individual groups, such as, for example, terrorists.

And they include as well embargoes, trade restrictions, financial restrictions, travel restrictions.

In the EU as well at the moment, you have about 30 sanction regimes in place amongst these before the War, today's war, you had restrictive measures in reaction to Russia's action destabilising the situation in Ukraine.

So that was very much pre-war some sanction exists.

So what about the unilateral sanctions, then the very controversial unilateral sanctions?

As you can understand, they are taken by the given state without the treaty basis.

So we're not talking about the charter of the United Nations cahpter 7 but a treaty basis.

The US is championing this category, probably not a surprise, but other countries have had recourse to this mechanism as well.

For example, the UK and I'm going to give you the example of against Iran.

Here again, these economic sanctions take a number of forms from complete embargo, that is the total interdiction of trade, travel and complex financial transaction to more targeted measures such as blocking or freezing financial assets, imposing restrictions on importation or exportation, for example, and putting in place a licencing system.

The authority to take this meausre is a matter of domestic law.

However, the question of jurisdiction is particularly sensitive.

Where and to whom would these sanctions be applied and what from?

There is a clear extraterritorial element here to the unilateral imposition of economic restrictive measures.

In the language of the International Commission Law Commission, These unilateral sanctions are called counter measure.

If you read the Chapter five, Article 22 of the articles of the Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Act, you have a rather tortuous way to preclude the wrongfulness of an act of state, not in conformity with an international obligation to another state.

The commentary is really interesting and to be read, it says indeed, in the literature concerning countermeasures, effort is sometimes made to the application of a sanction or to reaction to prior international acts.

Historically, the more usual terminology was that of legitimate reprisal or, more generally, measures of self-protection, self-help.

The term sanction has been used for measures taken in accordance with the constituent instrument of some international organisations, in particular under Chapter seven of the Charter of the United Nations.

Despite the fact that the charter uses the term measure and not sanction.

The term reprisal is no longer widely used in the present context because of its association with the law of belligerents reprisal involving the use of force.

So as you understand, the Law Commission is trying its best not to use certain words while describing a given situation and even not really using the word sanction.

I have to point to something, keep in mind the idea of self-protection of self help when these sanctions are indeed unilaterally.

So indeed, we have an idea here which is close to the idea of self-defence.

The measure at stake could be described as self-help or self-protection.

The question of legality remains even if analysed in reference to the part 3, chapter 2 countermeasures, which deals with the condiditon for full and limitation on the taking of countermeasure passenger states.

Very interesting indeed.

Articles are the responsibility of States for International Act and Chapter five.

Now, let's talk about the legality, legitimacy and efficacy.

I think legality, you understood a number of things are ready based on the United Nations charter.

The sort of ultimate case here is the famous Nicaragua case, which has provided a very clear illustration of the ambiguity and illegality of certain measures.Economic sanctions were imposed at the time, by the United States to obtain political goals in the comprehensive trade embargo levied against the government of the Nicaragua in 1985.

The U.S.

was acting pursuant to the International Economic Emergency Power Act of 1977 and the National Emergency Act of 1976.

A total embargo on all trade with Nicaragua was taken and service to the U.S.

by Nicaraguan airlines and flag vessels suspended.

Nicaragua has brought a complaint before the Grand Council, but the US argued that the measure had been taken in compliance with the Article 21.

I'm going to go into that later.

The panel was composed, but the conclusion did not help Nicaragua.

What happened?

Nicaragua then took the case to the International Court of Justice and International Court of Justice's Judgement condemned the US for its military paramilitary activities in Nicaragua and upheld Nicaraguan sovereignty.

So there's a level of ambiguity here.

Another very interesting example was that of the American sanction against Cuba, provided by the famous Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996.

Or equally famous act named after the two U.S.

senators sponsored the text.

So the U.S.

is interestingly and not the only country to resort to using unilateral economic sanction, as demonstrated by the example of the measure imposed by the UK and the Bank Mellat in the context of the Iran crisis and alleged links to the nuclear programme.

In June 2019, an unprecedented 1.6 billion.

Damages claim against the UK government by the Iranian bank Mellat was successfully settled after a 10 year judicial battle, so to shorten the case, the British court to declare the imposition of sanction against this bank illegal.

The case was defended by someone you may have seen if you follow my research futures webinars Sarosh Zaiwalla an Indian lawyer based in the UK and I welcomed a few months ago at the University of Portsmouth.

A very fascinating case because indeed, a very British court, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of an Iranian bank and against somehow the British government.

Sanctions are expression of discrimination.

The idea of reciprocity and the basic principle of trade, national treatment and most favoured nation treatment, indeed.

Yet the Article 21, which just alluded to it of the GAT as well as it GAT Article 40 planned for security exceptions.

These exceptions can be taken and take the form of trade sanctions.

They are legal if adopted, according to the WTO rules and procedures.

Yet they are legitimate.

Or are they legitimate?

What justifies the adoption?

Are there possibly better alternatives?

Are WTO authorised retaliatory measures legitimising economic sanctions?

All these questions are really important and fascinating and very controversial.

Just to remind you of the idea of non-discrimination, we actually touching upon a number of very important elements of international law and the international legal order indeed from trade investment, justice, special treatment, equality.

Now, as you just heard again, non-discrimination is very much at the core of the World Trade Organisation, ensuring the trade system with the article One of the GAT.

For example, in the words of the International Court of Justice, non-discrimination is the very intention of the closed intention to maintain at all times fundamental equality without discrimination amongst all of the countries concerned, as I just said, you have an exception, which is the Article 21 of the Gat security exceptions.

So you have to follow, obviously a sort of time frame and process.

Nothing in this argument shall be true to require you to furnish an information disclosure of which it is contrary to essential security interests or to prevent any contracting party from taking any action which is considered necessary for the protection of its essential secuirty interests and then you have.

All right, let's move on.

What about the effectiveness of sanctions?

We've alluded to that before, while submissions are still seen as a better alternative to the use of armed force, their effectiveness has never been proven.

On the contrary, a vast body of international literature demonstrates their lack of results to achieve political objective and indeed not to arm the country's population.

The negative consequences are many on populations, such as declining economy growth, an increase of the poverty gap, income inequalities widening the gap between the rural and urban areas, negative effects on vulnerable population in particular women and minority, reduce access to food, water and health and generally its debasement to drive human rights violations.

You have thousands of reports about that.

On September 26 September 2014, the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution 27 21 on the effects of coercive measures on human rights.

Unilateral coercive measure particularly targeted as contrary to international humanitarian law, the UN charter and the norms and principle governing peaceful relations amongst states.

So this is the resolution you can see here.

For example, the paragraph two strongly opposed to the extraterritorial nature of those measure, which in addition threatens the sovereignty of states.

And in this context, call upon all member states to niether recognise this measure, nor to apply them.

So in relation to this very important resolution, the human rights council and again, I've alluded to that before, has created the mandate of the special rapporteur on the negative impacts of unilateral coercive measures and the enjoyment of human rights is entirely difficult.

So you had a gentleman from Nigeria at the beginning and now you have a lady Professor from Belarus and they keep writing reports on the negative impact of unilateral sanctions particular.

So to conclude, is it a lesser entity?

Is it better than the use of force?

Probably.

Is it a regrettable decision on the longer term because it indeed impacts human rights and the well-being of population, but also growth?

It has a sort of boomerang effect as well in the global economy, probably as well.

To conclude, I invite you to go further and in particular to take a look at Professor James Nedumpara and myself International Economic Law textbook because you have a chapter on economic sanctions, on which I've based this short presentation and also a handbook in international investment and law and policy, but do refer to the chapter in our International Economic Law textbook.

I'd like to thank you very much for your attention.

And as you can see on this side of my screen, I referred to two quotes, which I hope makes sense in this general context.

One from Rumi Amashad who teaches law Surely my master wouldn't let me grew to be a fool and one which relates to you, students and colleagues.

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all, and it was from Aristotle.

Thank you very much for your attention.

And I'm more than happy to respond to your questions.

Thank you very much, Professor.

Speaker.

Now I question my colleagues for your comments, observations, questions and queries.

I also asked my students, please.

You're most welcome.

To regulate your questionss and sharing observations.

Yes, ma'am.

Is.

So we already have a question from somebody.

So I'm a former student from South Asian University and currently I'm working as associate professor thank you so much for this excellent talk.

I have a question which might be slightly off topic, but it's definitive connected to the importance of sanctions unilaterally by the states on not just a state, but also individual.

So I was wondering if you could tell us your thoughts on this, the act of imposing sanctions on individuals of the state.

And then the relationship of that where the obligations under these bilateral investment treaties.

To put it into perspective, let's say we have the United States, U.K.

or for that matter, is Canada imposing sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

Now these Russian oligarchs must be having investments in these countries.

So what is the relationship between , this imposing of sanctions on the oligarchs or the investors so to say and the obligations of these states, the US, UK and Canada under the bilateral investment treaties that they must be having with Russia?

How do you reconcile?

Yes, it's a very interesting question.

Thank you very much for asking this question.

As you understood from the short presentation, unilateral sanctions, whatever you call them, self defence interests, whatever the name, are generally seen as illegal from an international perspective.

Because they question the jurisdiction.

They have a very strong territorial dimension.

They are going to harm population and economy.

Also, as alluded to during the presentation, there is a sort of boomerang is what do I mean by that?

Exactly what you say was that sometimes if you apply a sanction if you implement sanction against a given individual as an oligarch or given investment , not to target someone in particular, a company, you may be in breach of International legal obligations, for example, indeed, as you said, some obligation and even a bilateral investment treaty.

I like to go back to my example Bank Mellat, because it's really fascinating story.

Yes sanctions against Iran, against a given back.

That's very fine.

But the problem is that in imposing sanctions, it contradicted all the commitments made.

And so eventually, as you can see, after a long procedure, the Supreme Court in the U.K.

declared the sanctions illegal.

And so repaid if wish the bank.

And in fact, so what might happen?

It needs to be seen because in this given situation, you know, it's only been a few weeks since sanctions are deabted.

But you can imagine in a few months, in a few years, some investment dispute settlement against the UK, against France, against the US because some breaches of bilateral investment treaties would have been demonstrated.

So you understand my point, and I hope it's responded to your question.

Yes, that has Professor thank you so much.

I mean.

I would I have one question.

So thanks for setting the introduction to my question.

I have a more topical question.

You're not taking the same argument forward.

In fact, I have to stress to my question why there is so much of talk of Russia and China coming together to create an alternate [inaudible] I'm just wondering how does it work when juxtaposed with the commitments that they've made ay the IMF and the other international commitments that they've made at the United Nations or other, the developments that we got to the IMF and the monetary standards?

That's number one.

The second question that I have is something much which has been in a lot of this fashion and especially suddenly, you know, today we have a kind of a very guarded statement coming out of the government of India on this.

At least a kind of discussion that's the Rupee/Ruble discussion now this is not unique to India.

Talking about a Rupee/Ruble kind of trade management because this was also a discussion with Russia and China also doing the same kind of talk, especially because China is not going to be as hit by Ruble/China trade.

Because China is 10 times a lot stronger economy and a bigger economy than Russia.

But given that India has kind of 2% trade Russia.

How does a Rupee/Ruble work in the context of does it expose India to any kind of a retaliatory or some kind of measures from the world, for instance, how do we understand this under international law having these kind of localised?

Because in that sense, if you look at that, the effect of that very intimate trickle down impact of the sanctions, if every state tries to have its own kind of an arrangement in local currencies, obviously is going to address.

Or, you know, impact the sanctions in top of that.

Thanks for this.

Thank you so much for the excellent question.

There are plenty of questions in your questions, but the first thing I think we should say in a globalised economy, Russia is very much part of the international supply chain for many different reasons.

So how can these sanctions be really effective?

We are all interdependent, so how can you exactly target the country without harming your own country?

And also, as far as the financial environment is concerned, that's also super interesting and there is clearly a very important financial dimension to it during a crisis.

You're related or you referred to the IMF International Monetary Fund for the students who are not so familiar.

As you know, it's US led.

For a simple reason, because it's based on the dollar.

And so the power to simplify and here again is your interested we have a very good chapter in our textbook.

The power of each and every member depends each currency and the availability of the currency.

And in fact, the dollar, because the dollar is the norm is the base on which everything is organised.

So for a country like Russia, it's slightly problematic.

It's also problematic for China's currency, the Yuan, is not convertible.

So these discussions are going on for ever.

And to to sort of redefine the powers at play within the IMF.

So there's certainly something in the background like that.

Now when you tell me about the Rupee/Ruble sort of.

connection.

Yes, Russia and India are trade partners are they major major trade partners.

Yes and no right its not neccissarily India's major partner and vice versa, but there is a long term relationship, so I'm not too sure about this Rupee/Ruble thing because I don't necessarily see that as so important internationally, but I might be wrong.

There's something else I'd like to point out.

And of course, you all know about that.

We're talking about, you know, I was going to say most of all is good old fashioned currency.

But there's something else happening, you know, very well for two years now to it.

You have the sort of virtual currency, right?

You have discussions about Russia, not India but Russia going to bitcoin for instance.

So what's going to happen?

This is also a really critical moment because it's a moment of transition between a system, which is the Bretton Woods system with the IMF and World Bank and to a lesser extent, indeed the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations.

To another system completely globalised in which the state plays a sort, but in which certain states can use maybe other resources and can gain independence from that.

Whether it's good or bad to what for the good of humanity, I don't know, but you see, there is more complexity.

So I can't really answer your question because I have the same interrogation as you have.

But surely the questioning around the financial system, the convertability, the dollar, the fact that today's virtual currency mostly bitcoin, are gaining in importance, is certainly playing a role.

Yes.

Thank you later.

Just to mention a small programming note.

Your book is going to be there very soon on the library.

All of us to get actually read that.

Yeah, we have another question coming up.

But then on the chat box, that is the question from a former student of ours.

The utility and futility of international economic sanctions in the era of economic globalisation.

I'm sure I think that was a part of your introduction.

If you want to substantiate with anything more on that, probably.

Thank you very much for this really interesting question as well.

So as I try to explain, you know, it's the lesser of the evils becasue it's not coercive but it's not the use of military force.

And so it's all about the United Nations Charter and indeed the Chapter seven and finding ways to influence the pact countries without resorting to resorting to armed force.

So that's the idea.

But again, these sanctions are supposed to be taken collectively following certain rules within the context of the United Nations Charter and a United Nations programme.

One.

It's not always the case because you have unilateral sanction from different states, as we see very clearly today.

How are unilateral sanctions breach, they are breached, so it's difficult to answer they are a breach because of globalisation.

I suppose you can just work around certain things.

You know, you can always find other systems and other effective against influential and powerful nations, I would say probably not from what you can read from, you know, the vast literature on sanction from economic and international perspective, probably not.

And they might have from a more psychological issues perspective, very damaging effects because the donation in question feels isolated and he's even more willing to engage in more violence, certainly.

I think we have a question from.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, go ahead.

Okay, I got it.

Thank you very much for your question.

there is an interesting school in international investment law I know that from many colleagues doing research on investments.

An excellent question, I think, we're not really an exact definition to the framework because we're talking about legitimate expectations in international investment law, I sort of understand the comparison and the use and abuse of the term legitimate, but it's quite different.

So if you want to continue this discussion together and I'm happy to help you form your dissertation, but I think the question is not really related to the legitiamte character of sanctions in international law, although I understand certain terms are very often abused.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

There's another question.

Yes.

Thank you.

My privilege.

I just had one question on you discussed unilateral coercive measures.

What about multi-lateral sanctions are faced by the U.N.

once after the invasion of Kuwait, by Iraq, the Security Council, who did these very harsh sanctions on Iraq and in fact, they could not stop.

So I was wondering what is the human rights law and humanitarian law accountability that could, do have to do some sort of your contribution to organisations like the U.N., but these measures, which might have significant impacts on the lives of people in sanctioned countries.

Yes, again, very interesting.

Very so you see from the presentation that on the contrary to unilateral sanctions, multilateral one taken into, for instance, the United Nations on the basis of the Chapter seven are deemed legal.

All right now as youunderstood as well since 66, you have 30 regimes of sanctioned states everywhere in the world, from Yemen to Iraq, etc.

You have monitoring bodies set up by the U.N.

to monitor the sanctions and the impact of this on the population.

This is how the UN manages that and tries to see whether very specific issue of the sanction on the one hand and no harm or not too much harm for the population.

Does it work, does it not work and I have my own particular opinion.

and you have to go case by case, I suppose.

But the way it works, that one its legal and framed by the United Nations charter, second monitors by committees monitoring the difference in almost daily basis of the sanction and proposing that we throw all of adaptation.

Thank you,.

Professor Choukroune There are two questions in the chat box one which talks about, you know, economic restrictions likely to cause violations of basic human rights and that's adverse.

You know, the dominant position of any states is the global financial arena used to be abused to cause economic hardship to the economy of sovereign states, contrary to international law.

This is where probably the the importance of defining necessity also comes in right?

Neccessity in international economic law.

Yes, absolutely.

Would you like to take this, please?

Great question.

So I don't know if we're talking about General International law as we understood very well now as the United Nations Charter.

We're talking about international economic Law You were talking about the GAT  Article 21 security exemption, for example.

It has to be justified.

So the term necessity ois not necessarily used, but something similar to that you have to justify and you have to demonstrate that there is no other better alternative, a last resort.

Now again, if you look at the United Nations Human Rights Commission and different reports which have been written on economic sanctions, you see that it the extremely hard on the long term.

So is it something abusive from dominant states to take sanctions againstsmaller states?

So you have the answer, right?

So I invite you to take a look at the United Nations reports on the sanction and see the role in particular of the special rapporteur on sanction or what they call, you know, sort of a unique unilateral measure.

It's a difficult sort of game for the United Nations because they need to approve the sanctions they want and they want to denoucnce the unilateral ones as well.

So there's a level of ambiguity here.

But look at the reports.

You have all sorts of answers on a case by case basis and other countries.

But generally, of course, as you said from the beginning, the extremely harmful for the population.

There's a very interesting question that another student of ours.

She's a Ph.D.

student.

She posted this question.

Do you think sanctions upon powerful states affect other smaller states than the sanctions?

So she's basically talking about the spill-over effect of sanctions on the other states.

Exactly.

Again, I think it's a very good question.

You have to look at that in a very interdisciplinary way.

That's to be a good research projects for us economists and lawyers political scientists because theres surely a spill-over effect.

If a larger country is affected its support, maybe to smaller countries is going to be affected as well.

Its trade relation is going to be affected.

Imagine, for instance, a big country sourcing certain things in a smaller country but they can't because there is a trade embargo.

There's also the scenario, but of course, there is a spill-over effect in a globalised world.

I just have a small additional question to what was just asked.

So whenever we're talking about economic restrictions, likely on economic sanctions, likely to result in human rights disaster, human rights violations and such issues.

Now are we do, I think since we do not have anything specific in the economic law as such address the question of measuring these things.

Are we actually going to take it from either fragmented domains of international law t to explain whether a certain measures, Economic sanctions are actually necessary.

You know, things like that can be explained I understand what you say, so Isuppose that looking at the international commission report on state responsibility, for instance, is useful because you understand these sort of interplay between disciplines of international law and how we're trying, the whole thing is that we're trying in the United Nations not to use force, not to use military force to respond to a situation like a crisis of war.

So how do you do that without harming population?

It's extremely tricky, and you can always have lots of interactions.

There was a question before by Kishore, who is asking whether it would be advisable to either abolish or radically modernise the obsolete regime of the international economic sanctions surely.

Surely it should be at the centre of the work of the international law commission because we've seen that with multilateral ones or unilateral ones are producing positive effects.

But then again, you can ask me then what?

What do you do if you don't want to send an army?

I think we have another question can sanctions be justified when one pretty serious breach of international legitimacy see, for example, like how U.S.

sanctions on Cuba under the Helms-Burton Act.

It we will get back to the same problem.

Maybe preliminary breach of international law the problem in the case of Cuba is that the sanctions were unilateral we see mostly.

So on what grounds, what legal wrong, what political grounds do we impose sanctions unilaterally, what jurisdiction?

Its a question of extraterritoriality comes  into play again.

Do we have other questions?

No, we don't think so.

OK, thank you so much, Professor.

Just want to call out for the students if they have any more questions.

We look forward to having you again to discuss on this topic as well as I'm sure the issue of sanctions will long be debated.

Although, you know, good sense will prevail on Russia and Ukraine you know.

I think the issue of sanctions, which continues to be debated, and of course  with the theory of international economic law scholarship.

This is one area that we need to research more and more.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I can engage.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for your invitation, thank you so much to your colleagues and all students.

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all the colleagues who have joined us from the University of Portsmouth.

We have to thank you.

Thank you for everyone.

And thanks to all those who have taken time off to join with us today.

Thank you very much.