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Political Gain and Civilian Pain Humanitarian Impacts of Economic Sanctions
Edited by Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear Foreword by Lakhdar Brahimi
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Oxford
Contents
List of Illustrations vii List of Tables ix Foreword Lakhdar Brahimi xi Preface xvii List of Abbreviations xxi Part I: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives Introduction Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear 3
Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear 15 Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear 35 Part II: Four Case Studies A Preliminary Assessment Neta C. Crawford 57 Eric Hoskins 91 Complicated Consequences Julia Devin and Jaleh Dashti-Gibson 149 Sarah Zaidi 189 Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear 215 Selected Bibliography 247 Index 269 About the Contributors 275
Foreword Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear have assembled in Political Gain and Civilian Pain a well-documented and most welcome contribution to the debate about the use of economic sanctions as a means of achieving foreign policy objectives. The first of this book’s many merits is that it takes stock of much of what has been written or said by policymakers–inside and outside of the United Nations (UN) and other diplomatic arenas–as well as by scholars, journalists, and officials from both intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). As the editors write at the outset, "Comprehensive reviews of many social groups and situations and of current or projected situations for an entire people across a diverse set of economic, social, and health indicators have been rare." This work therefore offers a useful starting point for anyone wishing to take a closer look at the complex issues raised by economic sanctions, which tend to be used in quasi-routine fashion by the international community as a whole or by some of its members as a policy instrument that supposedly prevents conflict, restores peace, and otherwise secures compliance with desired norms of behavior from recalcitrant targeted states or factions within them. As usual, the real world is distinct from the theoretical version. Such use–some say abuse–of economic sanctions has created uneasiness among UN member states and within the ranks of international civil servants and NGO staff. The preoccupations and views of all those concerned by economic sanctions are accurately and fairly reflected in the pages of this volume. Field-workers from various UN agencies and NGOs will be particularly grateful, I believe, for the genuine sympathy and understanding shown by the editors and the authors of case studies when they describe the frustrations and numerous problems with sanctions as their "bite" increases along with the humanitarian needs of civilians in targeted countries. Also well highlighted is the peculiar situation of the United Nations that, far too often, finds itself entrusted with contradictory mandates: enforcing sanctions with one hand, and providing humanitarian End of page xi relief to the victims of those very same sanctions with the other. Three basic questions arise with reference to the imposition of economic sanctions. Is it legal? Does it work? At what price and who foots the bill? The editors and other contributors to this book shed much light on each of these questions, concentrating, quite rightly, on the last one, which is the central theme of their analyses as well as the most important issue in this context. The legality of sanctions is challenged, in the first place, by the party that is targeted. This is predictable enough–whether the culprits are from Iran, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Sudan, Burundi, or, for that matter, the European Union, Japan, or Canada (in the case of U.S. legislation threatening to extend to third countries several American sanctions against Cuba or Iran). They all have a wealth of arguments aiming to demonstrate that Article 41 of the UN Charter is not applicable, or that the measures contemplated are abusive and incompatible with principles of international law. In the Lockerbie case, for example, Libya has gone to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and argued that the Security Council has overstepped its boundaries and ignored international law (in particular the 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation), which contains adequate provisions to deal with the accusation directed against two Libyan nationals. Tripoli argues that there was no justification for the imposition of sanctions because it was willing to cooperate fully with the pursuit of international law. Sudan’s vehement and indignant denial of any involvement in the assassination attempt in June 1995 against President Hosni Mubarek of Egypt in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was not found convincing simply because of Khartoum’s known association with several groups allegedly guilty of terrorist activities in several neighboring countries, including Egypt. The evidence produced by Ethiopian authorities supporting their claims against Sudan’s assassination attempt was insubstantial, to say the least. Hence the hesitations of the Security Council and the resistance of some of its members to support even limited sanctions that would affect only Sudan Air’s international flights. Another unprecedented case regards Burundi, where yet another military coup was staged in July 1996. Burundi’s neighbors convened a summit conference in August and decreed comprehensive sanctions against Major Pierre Buyoya’s regime. This decision was not formally endorsed but only "supported" by the Security Council. The government of Burundi, to quote from a memorandum distributed by its prime minister, considers that "this End of page xii embargo amounts to a comprehensive blockade and violates the rules governing interstate relations" [cet embargo se revéle être un blocus total et viole la reglementation sur les rapports entre états]. The group of countries that initiated this action (Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zaire, and later Zambia) does not constitute a regional organization. It is, at best, an informal subregional group and, according to Burundi, has no valid legal grounds to take such a decision. According to Burundi, this decision amounts, in fact, to an act of war. These and other legal arguments put forward by targeted countries fall on deaf ears most of the time, not necessarily because they lack substance but because other governments as well as the public at large do not relish the prospects of being associated with the likes of Saddam Hussein, Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, the repressive military forces of Burundi, or Islamic fundamentalists in the Sudan. Nor would anyone wish to be considered as showing sympathy with suspected terrorists who might have been involved in such outrageous acts as the Lockerbie incident and the 1988 UTA (Union des Transports Aériens) disaster in Chad. In the case of the two Libyan nationals, guilt has not been definitively established by a court of law; and in theory, a basic right under any legal system in the world is that they should be presumed innocent until a due process proves otherwise. But in this particular case, the two are, one might say, "guilty by association," as result of the negative public image of their country’s leader. Legal principles, moral values, and human rights generally encounter predictable resistance by those governments whose national interests are at stake. Third World countries, including China as one of the Security Council’s permanent members, have often refused, or at least hesitated, to support sanctions that are viewed as infringing on the national sovereignty of the targeted country. The legal and moral arguments invoked are real enough, but their attitude also has another motive–namely, the fear that today’s punitive measures against one state may be a dangerous precedent for tomorrow’s intervention in their own internal affairs. Naturally, more powerful and more affluent states have fewer such fears, although they may have other interests. Russia, for example, is making no mystery of its view that sanctions should be lifted from Iraq–for reasons of principle and also so that Baghdad can resume repaying its substantial debts to Moscow. The European Union, Canada, and Japan, for their parts, immediately challenged U.S. legislation that threatened to extend to their business firms American sanctions against Cuba and Iran. The debate is far from finished, but concerns about the expanding resort to sanctions are genuine and growing both in government circles around End of page xiii the world and among the public at large. Discussions continue within committees in the General Assembly, and it seems that recommendations are contemplated with a view to set stricter guidelines for the imposition of economic sanctions by the Security Council. The essential issue of the debate is, of course, the impact of sanctions on vulnerable civilians in targeted countries who are men, women, and children–real people, not merely agenda items. The four countries singled out for detailed examination in this book–South Africa, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Haiti–are spread over four continents, have contrasting backgrounds, and therefore represent a wide spectrum of situations that allows the editors and case-study authors to pose appropriate and extremely vital questions and suggest pertinent responses to many of them. Cases not analyzed in the volume add other dimensions. Burundi, the latest country to be subjected to economic sanctions, is, as indicated earlier, a case without precedent in that the decision to apply sanctions was taken neither by the Security Council, as had been the case with Iraq and Yugoslavia, nor by the established Organization of African Unity (OAU) as the salient regional organization, as had been the case with sanctions against Haiti by the Organization of American States (OAS) that were later endorsed by the United Nations. The Sudan also presents other interesting features. Although Security Council Resolution 770 was adopted almost a year ago, sanctions have not become effective, because Sudan has complied with some of the council’s demands. Moreover–and this is more significant–some members of the Security Council have insisted that a report be submitted to them on the humanitarian consequences of sanctions; and other members of the council have argued that sanctions should be applied for a limited period of time and be automatically lifted at the end of a fixed period without a new decision. This is concrete evidence that the Security Council, in particular, and the international community, more generally, are aware of the terrible consequences of economic sanctions on people who were not meant to be hurt by them. Indeed, it is a cruel irony that dictators and their henchmen grow obscenely rich as a direct result of sanctions that are meant to punish them. Meanwhile, helpless civilians–especially the most vulnerable groups among them–are made to suffer hunger, disease, or even death as a result of those very same sanctions that are said to help them. And, to add insult to injury, the targeted regime will claim that all the things that went wrong–from inflation to a plane crash, a disappointing harvest, or even an earthquake–are caused by sanctions. The leaders of the targeted regime will assume the mantle of the gallant defenders of national sovereignty and the champions of human dignity. End of page xiv Opposition groups often support the imposition of sanctions on their own country. The African National Congress (ANC) of Nelson Mandela wanted sanctions to remain in force until elections were actually held and the hated apartheid system officially and effectively dismantled. The supporters of Jean-Bertrand Aristide clamored for sanctions when they understood that there was insufficient political will for more vigorous international action, especially military intervention. In Sudan, opposition groups are claiming that the imposition of sanctions will help precipitate the fall of the regime and will therefore not hurt the civilian population for very long. Many observers are skeptical and point out that the Sudanese opposition leaders have been predicting for several years the imminent collapse of the fundamentalist military regime. Iraq is a painful case without substantial political gain. Those opposition groups that enjoy active support from the most powerful foreign enemies of Saddam Hussein have been predicting the imminent collapse of the Baghdad regime for six very long and painful years. However, many highly respected Iraqi members of other opposition groups have, from the beginning, warned the international community that sanctions will not work and that their country’s present harsh regime will not change its ways because the international community has joined in punishing the Iraqi people. They, along with numerous non-Iraqi observers, have also warned that, one day, with the regime of Saddam Hussein still in place, the international community may find it difficult to lift sanctions because it would be seen as a victory for Baghdad and a defeat for its enemies. In times of severe budget cuts and grave financial difficulties for the United Nations and its organizations, the international community puts itself in a situation in which donors devote a large portion of meager resources to help Iraq, a rich country that should be giving, rather than receiving, humanitarian assistance. It is no wonder, then, that the editors find that "concerns are mounting that the short-term humanitarian consequences and the long-term structural effects of economic sanctions are often themselves as harmful as war itself, if not more so. In addition, the negative humanitarian consequences of sanctions plausibly outweigh whatever political objectives may have been accomplished." They also quote former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who "captured many of those concerns in his 1995 Supplement to An Agenda for Peace. He noted that sanctions are a ‘blunt instrument’ that inflict suffering on vulnerable groups, complicate the work of humanitarian agencies, cause long-term damage to the productive capacity of target nations, and generate severe effects on neighboring countries." End of page xv There is every reason to feel confident that these acute preoccupations also will be shared more and more universally. When economic sanctions are agreed, they should be accompanied by the careful calculations and humanitarian safeguards that the editors recommend. Political Gain and Civilian Pain breaks new ground for applied scholarship. I commend it to diplomats, UN and NGO officials, and academics alike. It is a "must" for anyone active in this field. –Lakhdar Brahimi Under-Secretary-General for the Secretary-General’s Preventive Peacemaking Efforts Preface Each of us serves in numerous ways as an author or editor of this volume. Each of us has conducted original research about many of the crucial areas of activity that provide the central framework for this book. We have also spent considerable time working within, or consulting with, international organizations. Each took primary responsibility for a section of this book and in serving as first-draft author of particular chapters. Tom Weiss took responsibility for overall editing of the volume and for negotiations with contributors and the publisher; George Lopez drafted the introduction and most of chapters 1 and 2 with rewriting by David Cortright. Larry Minear drafted the conclusions in chapter 7. Yet, each of us has commented so extensively and rewritten all chapters so thoroughly that pride of authorship has yielded to collective judgment, making this book a team effort. Our collaboration has, we hope, not only discouraged ill-informed and parochial points of view, but also produced a synergy and a better text than any one of us could have written on his own. We are pleased that this project has brought to bear the collective analytical strengths of three institutions: the Fourth Freedom Forum of Goshen, Indiana; the University of Notre Dame’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies; and the Humanitarianism and War Project of Brown University’s Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies. This type of collaboration is unusual in policy and academic circles, and we are proud of our efforts. As is customary at the outset of such volumes, we would like to acknowledge the efforts of numerous colleagues who have contributed to the quality of what follows. The enthusiasm and logistical support provided by our editor, Jennifer Knerr of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, was indispensable in bringing the volume to fruition. Outside referees, unknown to us, provided insightful comments on the manuscript. We would particularly wish to thank Lakhdar Brahimi, who has graced this volume with his insightful foreword. As a former foreign minister and ambassador of Algeria, he has followed international politics from a distinct vantage point. As under-secretary-general for the Secretary- End of page xvii General’s Preventive and Peacemaking Efforts, he has conducted numerous missions for the United Nations. As special representative of the UN secretary-general, he led two UN missions that are among the cases under analysis in this volume. In spring 1994, he headed the UN Observer Mission in South Africa (UNOMSA) for the elections that ended apartheid and saw the birth of a nonracial South Africa. And from September 1994 until March 1996, he headed the UN Mission in Haiti (UNMIH) that followed the U.S. Multinational Force and contributed to the return of the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the organization of peaceful legislative and presidential elections, and the peaceful handover of power from one democratically elected president to another for the first time in Haiti’s tormented history. It would be hard to imagine a person who is better qualified to introduce this book, and we are very grateful that Lakhdar Brahimi took time from his busy schedule to write his foreword. Discussion groups helped us to frame issues in 1995 and 1996. Although only the authors are responsible for the final versions of chapters, we would like to acknowledge with gratitude the time and effort that more than two dozen present and former UN officials, humanitarian practitioners, and scholarly experts put into improving our work during two meetings that we organized in New York: David Bassiouni, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Jennifer Daskal, Juergen Dedring, Graciana del Castillo, Claude de Ville de Goyet, Marie-Andrée Diouf, Margaret Doxey, Jon Ebersole, Kimberly Ann Elliott, Winifred Fitzgerald, Peter Küng, Manfred Kulessa, Ed Luck, Stephen Marks, Melissa Martinez, Anita Mathur, Roger Normand, Jack Patterson, Joel Rosenthal, Joseph J. Stephanides, Claudia von Braunmühl, and Andrew Yarrow. We would like to express our special gratitude to those staff members of the Watson Institute who–with good humor and professionalism–retyped, edited, and helped shape various versions of this manuscript and the accompanying tables and illustrations. Thanks are in order for Fred Fullerton, Greg Kazarian, Amy Langlais, and George Potter. Laura Sadovnikoff should be singled out, for the final texts would have been considerably slower in appearing and certainly less well presented without her patient and careful attention to editorial details. Cindy Collins, a graduate student in the Department of Political Science at Brown University, was a very useful helping hand at the outset of this process. We especially thank Julia Wagler, senior researcher at the Fourth Freedom Forum, whose dedicated investigative and editorial services contributed greatly to this enterprise. We also acknowledge the important contributions of Fourth Freedom Forum staffers Jennifer Glick, Ann End of page xviii Miller Pedler, and Miriam Redsecker. Appreciation also goes to Jaleh Dashti-Gibson, a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame, who coauthored the chapter on the former Yugoslavia and also helped at various stages in interviewing, checking facts and endnotes, and compiling the bibliography. A complicated joint undertaking of this sort could only materialize through significant outside financial support provided by the Program on Peace and International Cooperation of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the United States Institute of Peace. In addition, four institutions of the United Nations system through the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Children’s Fund, the UN Development Programme, and the World Food Programme) have financed related work, which has been helpful in our own writing of this book. We are also indebted to the generosity of Howard Brembeck, founder and chairman of the Fourth Freedom Forum. This substantial support permitted us to collaborate intensively, to commission the case studies in the volume, to organize evaluation sessions, and to gather data while maintaining our analytical independence. To each of these sponsors and benefactors we are truly grateful. It is probably worth mentioning at the outset that the four of us are sympathetic to multilateral organizations in general, and to the United Nations in particular. We believe that the UN fits into a complicated world situation that does not often yield to unilateral undertakings. We believe that the first Clinton administration recognized this reality when initially describing its foreign policy as one that pursued "assertive multilateralism." Although it retreated from this rhetoric, it has been reluctant to act without collective approval and support. Madeleine Albright, now secretary of state for the second Clinton administration but then U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, stated clearly in 1993 what remains valid today: "There will be many occasions when we need to bring pressure to bear on the belligerents of the post—Cold War period and use our influence to prevent ethnic and other regional conflicts from erupting. But usually we will not want to act alone–our stake will be limited and direct US intervention unwise."1 However, our orientation is not accurately described as "Wilsonian idealism," and it certainly does not reflect a knee-jerk and uncritical support for transnational efforts. Our preference for multilateral diplomacy, through sanctions among other means, is not idealistic. To the contrary, unilateralists promoting an image of unbridled state control over events are the real utopians of the twenty-first century. Multilateral End of page xix diplomacy can be complicated and messy, but much unilateral action can be dangerous and destructive. In spite of well-publicized threats to the United Nations emanating from Washington,2 we feel compelled to state our own position at the outset of this volume. The theoretical analyses and case studies of economic sanctions in this volume point out the weaknesses of the UN system and, indeed, the ambiguities of international coercion. We do not hesitate to discuss how, when, and where the so-called international community has not measured up to reasonable expectations. After all, multilateralism is not a religion. It is something not to be worshipped but to be critically analyzed. Although circumscribed by international law and the UN Charter, decisions to impose multilateral economic sanctions are primarily affected by the foreign policies of member states. We hope this volume makes a contribution to how leaders in those member states, as well as officials at the United Nations, approach economic sanctions in the future. Notes 1. Quoted in the Washington Post, National Weekly Edition, 21—27 June 1993, 16. 2. See, e.g., Jesse Helms, "Saving the U.N.: A Challenge to the Next Secretary-General," Foreign Affairs 75, no. 5 (September/October 1996): 2—7. For a bipartisan overview on the eve of the 1996 presidential elections, see George Soros, chairman of an independent task force, American National Interest and the United Nations (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996). For more academic overviews, see John Gerard Ruggie, Winning the Peace: America and World Order in the New Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); and Charles William Maynes and Richard S. Williamson, eds., U.S. Foreign Policy and the United Nations System (New York: Norton, 1996). Introduction
Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear
This volume reflects upon the convergence of two major policy trends in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War’s end. The first is the dramatic increase in the resort to international economic sanctions as a means of multilateral coercive action against states or political authorities that violate basic norms of international relations.1 The second is the increased international willingness to mount international responses to humanitarian emergencies in civil wars, one of the defining characteristics of which is the inability or unwillingness of national or local political authorities to cope.2 The four editors have worked separately on these issues, but this volume presents the opportunity to bring them together. Context At first glance, there is no logical reason why these two policy concerns would collide. In its best light, the "sanctions era" that dawned in 1990 signaled the end of a stalemated United Nations (UN) Security Council.3 The breakthrough in the impasse between the superpowers opened up the potential that nonforcible, but coercive, approaches such as sanctions could be employed as an alternative to coercion through military force in dealing with aggressors and others who violated fundamental principles of international law. Whereas the period from 1945 to 1990 had witnessed some sixty sanctions cases, only two of these were multilateral and imposed by the Security Council: against Rhodesia in 1966 and South Africa in 1977. During this period more than two-thirds of the sanctions cases were initiated and maintained by the United States. Of these, nearly three-quarters involved U.S. unilateral action.4 The change in this unilateral pattern has been pronounced. In the End of page 3 1990s, the Security Council passed partial or comprehensive sanctions against Iraq, the states of the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Liberia, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and the Sudan. These cases were particularly striking because of the range of purposes and circumstances for which they were imposed. The Security Council has placed sanctions on states for a variety of reasons: to overturn direct aggression against another state; to prompt the restoration of democracy; to condemn human rights abuses; and to punish the harboring of terrorists and others charged with international crimes.5 In unprecedented action, the council also imposed sanctions on two nonstate actors: the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (formerly Kampuchea) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Despite the diversity of sanctions episodes and their greater multilateral character, one dimension of sanctions policy remains unchanged. Conventional wisdom assumes that the imposition of economic coercion will exercise sufficient "bite" that citizens in the targeted country will exert political pressure to force either a change in the behavior of the authorities or their removal altogether. Although analysts have long characterized this underlying assumption as naive, inflicting civilian pain in order to achieve political gain remains the modus operandi of sanctions policy.6 Implicit in this approach, and often presumed to be substantiated by historical evidence for the majority of sanctions cases before 1990, has been the claim that such sanctions, while inflicting pain, will be much less damaging to the economy generally, to civilian livelihood, and indeed to life itself than the alternative of war. This assumption, reviewed in the light of recent experience, is reflected in the title, Political Gain and Civilian Pain. Developing parallel to the increased attractiveness of economic sanctions has been burgeoning attention to human suffering. This focus, too, has been liberated from the strictures of the Cold War. For decades, these concerns–such as hunger, population displacement within national borders, and human rights abuses–were considered within the domestic jurisdiction of sovereign states and were regarded as off limits to the international community. In stark contrast, the years since 1990 have witnessed numerous and largely unprecedented humanitarian initiatives undertaken by the United Nations that have expanded the legitimate area of international action. Prominent among these have been the creation of safe havens for Iraqi Kurds in 1991, military intervention to guarantee the unimpeded delivery of food supplies to starving Somalis in 1992, and the restoration of the elected authorities in Haiti in 1994. Efforts in Bosnia and Rwanda, although less successful, also End of page 4 marked a radical departure from time-tested reluctance to challenge opprobrious domestic practices.7 The former UN secretary-general made humanitarian action during these emergencies a pivotal element in his two major policy analyses of peace and security in 1992 and 1995.8 This new concern for human suffering, even when nested within societies in conflict, is reflected in the subtitle of this volume, Humanitarian Impacts of Economic Sanctions. The harbinger of these two newly prominent policy realities of international life–the wider use of multilateral economic sanctions and a more assertive humanitarianism–took shape in the international response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Moving swiftly to counteract the Iraqi military advance, the UN Security Council first imposed economic sanctions in August then approved military action by a coalition of states in January. Further, in the aftermath of the war, the world organization launched a major humanitarian effort to assist Kurdish populations in northern Iraq that came under pressure from the Saddam Hussein regime. At the same time, the UN continued stringent sanctions as leverage for enforcing one of the most prominent features of the Gulf War peace agreement–that Iraq dismantle its production and storage facilities for weapons of mass destruction and that it turn over to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) documents related to this program. Observations by officials from UN organizations and other humanitarian groups, reinforced by high-visibility media coverage, including a May 1996 segment of the CBS News program 60 Minutes, spotlighted the devastation of war and especially of the economic sanctions continuing after the war to Iraq’s economic and social infrastructure. In UN inner circles, and often even among those concerned with Iraq’s lack of compliance with the work of the IAEA, diplomats expressed grave reservations about the impact of the sanctions on civilians and on the carrying capacity of Iraqi society. During negotiations spanning more than two years, they pressed for arrangements under which Iraq could sell oil to generate revenue to purchase foodstuffs.9 Thus the humanitarian impacts of sanctions on Iraq, as well as their political effectiveness, became the subject of widespread challenge.10 Some of these concerns, like the analysis of Bashir Al-Samarrai, a member of the Iraqi Democratic Opposition, framed the pain-and-gain nexus quite clearly: Economic sanctions have targeted the wrong party in Iraq, i.e., the poor, the helpless, and the children. Most Iraqis question the logic of this policy by wondering how it is possible for a helpless nation to overthrow one of the world’s most ruthless dictators, when the U.S. End of page 5 and its allies could not, or would not, remove Saddam from power during the war. How much suffering must innocent Iraqis endure before the UN ends its strangulation policy or before Saddam is removed? Is the world willing to stand by and watch a whole nation be starved and strangled? To continue the present policy is analogous to blowing up an aircraft with all passengers aboard to kill the hijacker. In this standoff eighteen million Iraqis are the passengers.11 The question of how much pain the community of states is willing to inflict on civilians in the quest for political gains was raised also in the imposition of sanctions against the former Yugoslavia and Haiti. In earlier years, opponents of sanctions and divestment in South Africa also had sought to dramatize the potential negative impact of sanctions on the economy and on the black majority. In all of these instances, it was clear that the international community12 had discovered a blunt though stinging weapon but had yet to achieve clarity about the ground rules for its utilization. There was confusion about both the pain and the gain sides of the equation. In fact, some challenged the assumption that the use of the term "equation" was accurate or appropriate at all. In any event, questioning the civilian costs of sanctions and achieving clarity about those costs are two fundamentally different matters. As sanctions have become more multilateral, the UN secretariat and several UN agencies, including the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), have conducted impact studies in particular targeted countries. These studies have focused on specific segments of the population, such as children, and have examined impact in particular sectors, such as health. Comprehensive reviews of many social groups and situations and of the current or projected situation for an entire people across a diverse set of economic, social, and health indicators have been rare.13 Moreover, some recent studies have been controversial. As will be noted in several cases, reports by UN emissaries such as Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan and Marti Ahtisaari on Iraq and by the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies on Haiti were quickly caught up in a swirl of debate between those who would like to see sanctions continued and those who believe that their costs are disproportionate and even immoral. Others have argued, in contrast, that some of the claims about child deaths in Iraq are erroneously based on extrapolated estimates rather than hard data.14 An accepted methodology has yet to be devised that provides comparable information that could be the basis for reasoned, as opposed to ideological, debate; this methodology is a topic in chapter 2 of this volume. Moreover, given the End of page 6 political pressures on those carrying out sanctions research, safeguards have yet to be devised to protect the integrity of such research, whether it is accomplished by intergovernmental and governmental organizations or by private research groups. Available reports provide relatively little information about the winners and losers who emerge in the competition and reallocation of scarce resources in a target state.15 They offer even less about the mix of short-term and long-term effects of sanctions on a nation’s economic and social infrastructure, impacts with a bearing on the quality of civilian life in the near and medium-term future. Better data and analytical frameworks are critically important to member states of the United Nations and to humanitarian agencies as future sanctions are contemplated. Content The rationale for this volume is twofold. First, we seek to obtain some very specific information on selected episodes of multilateral sanctions–South Africa, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Haiti–to understand their humanitarian and political impacts better. Second, we seek to develop a methodology for assessing the humanitarian impact of sanctions wherever they are contemplated and/or imposed. These two tasks reinforce each other. Many of the tensions in the humanitarian and political nexus of sanctions were apparent to us at the outset. We were aware of the host of conceptual, methodological, and measurement problems associated with such an investigation. However, consultations with public officials, experts, policy analysts, and aid personnel have dramatized anew for us the practical dilemmas in assessing and mitigating the most harsh and unintended effects of sanctions. Our own prior research work and policy dispositions on this problématique meant that each of us as editors brought to this collaboration views that were more or less already formed. Cortright and Lopez, the two of us most deeply involved in sanctions work from an academic base, believed that once we had reviewed the human costs of sanctions, our study would move quickly to examine more humane and efficient means of imposing sanctions. They were particularly interested in whether financial, communication, and transportation controls might be imposed in a coordinated and systematic manner as key elements in "smarter" sanctions. Because of in-depth fieldwork in war zones as part of the Humanitarianism and War Project team, Minear and Weiss were already familiar with the devastation wrought by sanctions and predisposed to delimit as narrowly as possible the conditions under which sanctions could be imposed. End of page 7 This book demonstrates how a careful analysis of available information and even limited empirical data, combined with continuous frank exchange of views, can lead investigators to conclusions that differ from their original inclinations. Enriched by a year and a half of collaboration, the four editors are not unanimous on the advisability of economic sanctions as a policy instrument. However, we now have a clearer idea about the issues that should be taken into account when sanctions are under consideration, are in place, or should be lifted. Moreover, the research presented here–including our first two chapters, the four case studies, and our conclusions and recommendations in the final chapter–provides steps toward a template for monitoring humanitarian impacts of sanctions in future cases. This book reflects a research design that has attempted to be inductive, oriented toward cases, and sensitive to policy. We have scrutinized the literature of economic sanctions with an eye toward learning as much as possible about impacts. We have sought to connect our review of humanitarian impacts and political results with each other. From the outset, we have maintained a steady dialogue with officials of United Nations agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other groups. For the case studies in particular, we have enlisted the participation of individuals who were willing to place their country expertise within the context of our broader search for a serviceable methodology to facilitate the evolution of individual and improvisational sanctions responses into a more consistent and accountable sanctions regime. Our purview is confined to the humanitarian impacts of sanctions within target states, not among third parties. We acknowledge the difficulties that are encountered by neighboring states and the trading partners of targeted countries when sanctions are imposed, and we recognize that serious political and humanitarian problems are created by these secondary effects.16 Certainly the range of issues associated with Article 50 of the UN Charter (compensation to third parties that are affected by sanctions) warrants sustained policy research in its own right. To keep the current volume to manageable length, however, we have focused our investigation on direct effects within sanctioned countries. Part I of the book provides the conceptual and analytical framework. Chapter 1 presents a conceptual discussion of sanctions as instruments that, in the process of achieving the political objective of changed behavior in the target nation, have humanitarian consequences in five specific regards. Chapter 2 is more methodological, specifying the End of page 8 contours of the case studies, identifying indicators to be examined in measuring the impact of sanctions on civilians, and analyzing the political context of economic coercion. It also analyzes the difficulties of disaggregating the effects of sanctions from other factors and of taking into account adjustments made by a targeted government. Part II comprises case studies that review the individual experience of sanctions in South Africa (chapter 3), Iraq (chapter 4), the former Yugoslavia (chapter 5), and Haiti (chapter 6). Each analysis draws as much as possible on the framework outlined in Part I within the constraints imposed by research conditions and the uniqueness of each case. Each of the chapters includes persons who have conducted firsthand research in the areas reviewed. New fieldwork was carried out specifically for this volume only in South Africa. Chapter 3, by Neta Crawford, examines the economic, social, and political impacts of the longest-running case of sanctions, those against the apartheid government of South Africa from 1977 until 1994. An assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, a frequent visitor to South Africa over the last decade, and a longtime observer of developments there, Crawford examines the only case in the volume that predates the end of the Cold War. Set against substantial civilian pain from economic coercive measures are demonstrable political gains in the form of a democratically elected black majority government. Crawford details steps taken by the white minority government to deflect the impacts of sanctions, some of which yielded unexpected benefits for the majority population. Chapter 4, by Eric Hoskins, chronicles the devastating impacts of sanctions on human conditions in Iraq, unmitigated by significant changes on the political front. A physician and independent consultant who was a member of the original Harvard study team that engaged in the first household-based study of the effects on the people of Iraq of the Gulf War and sanctions, Hoskins chronicles the deepening distress of civilians since August 1990. Since the chapter was completed, negotiations have been concluded to allow for some of the proceeds from the limited sale of Iraqi oil to underwrite relief activities in Iraq. Chapter 5, by Julia Devin (an international lawyer and consultant) and Jaleh Dashti-Gibson (a Ph.D. candidate in government and international studies at the University of Notre Dame), examines the multiple contexts in which sanctions came to play a role in attempts to dissuade Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian regime in Belgrade from supporting the war of Bosnian Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the political side, the case occupies something of a middle position between End of page 9 the success of sanctions against South Africa and their failure in Iraq. Factors other than sanctions–in particular, battle fatigue and a new military balance–played significant roles in facilitating the 1995 Dayton agreement. The civilian pain associated with sanctions in Serbia and Montenegro was substantial and, combined with the devastation wrought by the war, poses daunting difficulties for future reconstruction. Chapter 6 is by Sarah Zaidi, a trained political scientist who is the science director at the Center for Economic and Human Rights in New York. She examines perhaps the most oscillating of sanctions policy episodes, that of Haiti. The on-again, off-again pattern makes it difficult to assess the precise impact of sanctions, as do the general poverty and under-employment of a large proportion of the Haitian population. The political objective of sanctions–the restoration of the elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the elimination of the de facto military junta led by Raoul Cédras–was accomplished, but the determining role was played by overwhelming U.S. military force rather than economic coercion. Sanctions were discredited over time; and Haitian civilians, who had initially accepted the privation that sanctions entailed in exchange for the international solidarity that they conveyed, emerged disillusioned and poorer for the experience. Chapter 7 makes up Part III and provides a set of policy recommendations that reflect our own engagement with the issues and our reading of the recurrent themes in the case studies. These recommendations are also part of an ongoing dialogue with the many experts and practitioners consulted for this study.17 The recommendations themselves, however, emanate from our independent effort alone and seek to present a range of options and strategies to policymakers who impose sanctions, as well as to humanitarian agency officials who will operate in sanctioned environments. Notes 1. See David Cortright and George A. Lopez, eds., Economic Sanctions: Panacea or Peacebuilding in a Post—Cold War World? (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 3—17; and John Stremlau, Sharpening Economic Sanctions: Toward a Stronger Role for the United Nations, report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (New York: Carnegie Corp., November 1996), 12—18. 2. See esp. Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, Mercy under Fire: War and the Global Humanitarian Community (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995); and Humanitarian Politics (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1995). 3. For a discussion of this trend, see George A. Lopez and David End of page 10 Cortright, "The Sanctions Era: An Alternative to Military Intervention," Fletcher Forum for World Affairs 19, no. 2 (Summer/Fall, 1995): 65—86. 4. Previous research has concentrated largely upon the utility of sanctions as a foreign policy tool of the United States, exercised for the most part unilaterally. See Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: History and Current Policy and Economic Sanctions Reconsidered: Supplemental Case Histories (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990), which updated Economic Sanctions in Pursuit of Foreign Policy Goals (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1983). See also David A. Baldwin, Economic Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); and Theodore Galdi and Robert Shuey, U.S. Economic Sanctions Imposed against Specific Countries: 1979 to the Present (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 1992). The use of multilateral economic sanctions has recently become the subject of analysis. See, e.g., Lisa Martin, Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); and Lisa Martin, Political Symbol or Policy Tool? Making Sanctions Work (Muscatine, Iowa: Stanley Foundation, 1993). 5. The analysis of the meaning of such trends, both for the UN and for the United States as a key supporter of sanctions, is just beginning to be the subject of serious scrutiny. Two assessments of such trends are available in Stremlau, Sharpening International Sanctions; and Bruce W. Jentleson, "Economic Sanctions: Post—Cold War Policy Challenges," working paper prepared for the National Research Council’s Committee on International Conflict Resolution, Washington, D.C., June 1996. 6. The terminology and original critique were developed by Johan Galtung, "On the Effects of International Economic Sanctions, with Examples from the Case of Rhodesia," World Politics 19 (April 1967): 378—416. For a far-reaching analysis of the limitations in Galtung’s thinking about the domestic political and economic impact of sanctions, see David Matthew Rowe, "Surviving Economic Coercion: Rhodesia’s Responses to International Economic Sanctions" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1993), esp. 59—110. 7. See Thomas G. Weiss and Cindy Collins, Humanitarian Challenges and Intervention: World Politics and the Dilemmas of Help (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996). 8. Both the 1992 document An Agenda for Peace and the 1995 Supplement to An Agenda for Peace by Boutros Boutros-Ghali are republished in An Agenda for Peace 1995 (New York: United Nations, 1995). 9. This culminated in Security Council Resolution 986, whose implementation has attracted the attention of sanctioners and humanitarians alike. 10. For one compilation of comment and criticism by major international institutions and prominent individuals, see The Children Are Dying: The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq (New York: World View Forum, 1996). This volume reprints a 1995 report, "Evaluation of the Food and Nutrition Situation in Iraq by the FAO," by Ramsey Clark to members of the UN Security Council on the civilian impact of UN sanctions, and "An International Appeal to the U.S. Government and the U.N. Security Council." End of page 11 11. Bashir Al-Samarrai, "Economic Sanctions against Iraq: Do They Contribute to a Just Settlement?" in Economic Sanctions, ed. Cortright and Lopez, 138. 12. This nebulous moniker is somewhat abused shorthand. However, in the chapters written by the editors, it refers to the collectivity of political authorities who maintain formal ongoing relationships with one another during a particular historical period for a particular set of activities. Such authorities always include national leaders and diplomats from states as well as officials from the intergovernmental organizations that are financed by member states. In the humanitarian arena, staff members from NGOs are often included because their activities are increasingly financed with public resources and they also cooperate under a UN umbrella in field activities; so too are the international media, whose reporting frequently helps lead to policy changes and resource mobilization. 13. The FAO reports (there were several) are mentioned in the British publication The Lancet, 346, no. 8988 (2 December 1995): 1439—85. On Haiti, see the UNICEF-commissioned study by the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Sanctions in Haiti: Crisis in Humanitarian Action (Cambridge: Program on Human Security, November 1993). On Iraq, see Ahmed Al-Hadi and Omer Obeid, "Report on the Nutritional Status of Iraqi Children: One Year Following the Gulf War and Sustained Sanctions" (New York: United Nations Children’s Fund, June 1991); United Nations, Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Iraq by a Mission Led by Sadruddin Aga Khan, Executive Delegate of the Secretary-General, 15 July 1991 (Geneva: Office of the Executive Delegate of the Secretary-General for a United Nations Inter-agency Humanitarian Programme for Iraq, Kuwait and the Iraq/Turkey and Iraq/Iran Border Areas, 1991); and United Nations, Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Kuwait and Iraq in the Immediate Post-Crisis Environment by a Mission to the Area Led by Mr. Martti Ahtisaari, Under-Secretary-General for Administration and Management, 20 March 1991 (New York: United Nations, 1991). 14. See Kim Richard Nossal, Lori Buck, and Nicole Gallant, "Sanctions as Gendered Instrument of Statecraft" (paper presented at the British International Studies Association, Durham, England, 17 December 1996), 18 n. 53. See also the comments by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in response to claims of Iraqi child deaths, letter to The Lancet 347 (20 January 1996), 198. 15. One of the few exceptions is Rowe’s Surviving Economic Coercion, because of its examination of the economic and political impacts of sanctions on Rhodesia. Rowe examines governmental decisions on how to deal with sanctions and surveys the changing policies and actions of government as it worked with key industries and trade sectors in the country. Some of his findings are discussed in chapter 1.
16. Among the many UN reports and documents on the
subject are United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the
Charter of the United Nations and on the Strengthening of the Role of
the Organization: Draft Resolution Proposed by the Chairman of the Working
Group, Implementation of the Provisions of the Charter of the United
Nations Related to Assistance to Third States Affected by the Application
of Sanctions, A/C.6/51/L.18, 25 November 1996; United
End of page 12 Nations, Report of the Special
Committee on the Charter . . ., Implementation of the Provisions of the
Charter of the United Nations Related to Assistance to Third States Affected
by the Application of Sanctions under Chapter VII of the Charter, Report
of the Secretary-General, A/50/361, 22 August 1995; United Nations,
Strengthening of the Coordination of Humanitarian and Disaster Relief
Assistance of the United Nations, including Special Economic Assistance:
Special Economic Assistance to Individual Countries or Regions: Economic
Assistance to States Affected by the Implementation of the Security Council
Resolutions Imposing Sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(Serbia and Montenegro), Report of the Secretary-General, A/49/356,
9 September 1994. 17. In fact, this volume is
one stage in a multiyear process of consultation and collaboration. The
editors are working with the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee to develop
a checklist for monitoring the humanitarian impact of economic sanctions
by the UN system and other interested parties. 7 Political Gain and Civilian Pain Thomas G. Weiss, David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Larry Minear This volume has presented a framework
for analyzing the humanitarian impacts and political effectiveness of
multilateral economic sanctions, drawing from the experiences of South
Africa, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Haiti. This chapter addresses
recurrent themes in the country experiences, suggests points at which
the original analytical framework may itself need revision, and examines
issues emerging from the use of sanctions as a policy tool, particularly
the limitations of the current sanctions "regime." It assesses
humanitarian aspects and the complex and troublesome dynamics of weighing
civilian pain against political gain. Moreover, this chapter addresses
policy concerns and further research. An Overview of Recent Experience Of the four country situations examined
in this volume, multilateral economic sanctions appear to have been a
major success only in the case of South Africa. Sanctions helped to dismantle
South Africa’s entrenched apartheid system, opening the way to a
representative black-majority government for the first time in that nation’s
history. Through the gradual escalation of economic pressure, sanctions
curtailed South African access to international finance, forced the apartheid
regime to pay a surcharge of some 50 percent for oil purchases on world
markets, and contributed to declining growth rates. By depriving the military
of spare parts, sanctions also compromised South Africa’s air superiority
(a factor especially relevant in the Angolan war). Political authorities
sought to deflect the full force of sanctions through import substitution,
resulting in greater self-sufficiency in the energy and arms sectors.
These changes End of page 215 also had unintended and positive side-effects,
including the relaxation of apartheid strictures and, through broadened
education and job opportunities for black workers, the reinforcement of
organized efforts against apartheid. The experience in Iraq has been generally
negative. Imposed in August 1990 in the immediate aftermath of Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait, multilateral economic sanctions did not force the
exit of Iraqi troops. That was accomplished instead by the forty-three-day
war by the United States and its allies in January-February 1991. Following
the war, sanctions remained in place for more than six years, without
any noticeable effect in diminishing Saddam Hussein’s power.1
Yet sanctions had some limited impact in achieving secondary goals. According
to Rolf Ekeus, head of the United Nations special commission charged with
eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, sanctions were "very
important" in pressuring Saddam Hussein to accept UN demands.2
Iraq took steps to comply with some
of the conditions specified in Security Council Resolution 687 for lifting
sanctions, including acceptance of the UN Boundary Commission’s redrawn
borders with Kuwait, the destruction of certain weapons of mass destruction,
and the creation of the UN Compensation Fund. However, the United States
and the United Kingdom insist that Iraq must also comply with the requirement
of Resolution 688 to cease repression of the civilian population, which
further delays the lifting of sanctions. Efforts since mid-August 1991
to use the sale of Iraqi oil to underwrite the costs of humanitarian relief
and other international activities in Iraq finally bore fruit when Resolution
986 went into effect in December 1996. As of late 1996, Eric Hoskins judged
that the regime appeared "well-entrenched and in firm control"
while the condition of the civilian population was "dismal." The experience with sanctions in the
former Yugoslavia also has received mixed reviews. Imposed in May 1992
against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY; that is, Serbia and Montenegro),
the economic blockade was tightened later in 1992 and again in 1993 in
an effort to force Slobodan Milosevic to suspend his support for the Bosnian
Serbs and to accept the various peace agreements being negotiated by UN
and European Community diplomats. That the Bosnian Serbs signed the Dayton
agreement in November 1995 gives the impression that sanctions achieved
their purpose. Indeed, soon after sanctions were imposed, the Milosevic
regime seemed to adjust its policies, urging (although without success)
the Bosnian Serbs to accept the Vance-Owen plan in 1993 and lending support
to subsequent negotiations and the Dayton accords. Edward Luttwak argues
that sanctions "moderated the End of page 216 conduct of Belgrade’s most immoderate
leadership" and "induced whatever slight propensity has been
shown to negotiate."3 A report to the UN from a roundtable
discussion held in Copenhagen in June 1996 expressed the view that UN
sanctions were "the single most important reason for the government
in Belgrade changing its policies and accepting a negotiated peace agreement."4
Yet questions remain about the precise
role of sanctions in persuading Milosevic to join the peace process and
about the actual impact of such pressure on the Bosnian Serbs themselves.
Available evidence at this writing in early 1997 suggests that sanctions
bear an indirect relation to the process of negotiating an end to the
war. In a broader sense, the link between the Dayton accords themselves
and a durable peace in the former Yugoslavia also remains uncertain. There
is no doubt, however, about the significant levels of pain inflicted on
the FRY economy. The experience of sanctions in Haiti
was even more ambiguous. Responding to the military coup that ousted democratically
elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991, the Organization
of American States (OAS) levied sanctions that proved highly porous. In
June 1993 the UN Security Council imposed more comprehensive sanctions.
These seemed to have an immediate positive effect, as Haiti’s military
rulers accepted negotiations and signed the Governors Island accord supposedly
restoring Aristide to office. When sanctions were lifted before Aristide’s
actual return, however, the military regime reneged on its promises. The
sanctions were then reimposed in October 1993 and tightened in May 1994,
but with little or no impact on the junta’s intransigence. When the
regime finally stepped aside in September 1994, the decisive factor was
not sanctions but the show of U.S. military force authorized by the United
Nations. This outcome and the suffering caused by sanctions raised the
question of why so much civilian pain had been meted out for so little
political gain. Ironically, sanctions were encouraged and supported by
many of the poor who suffered from them and resisted by junta leaders
and Haitian elites, many of whom were enriched by the measures. In analyzing these four experiences,
it may be useful to establish a continuum with respect to the correlation
between economic sanctions and political change. On the positive end would
be South Africa, on the negative end Haiti and Iraq, with the former Yugoslavia
somewhere in the middle. Additional research–not to say future developments–might
shift the locations somewhat, with the Yugoslav experience perhaps most
susceptible to repositioning. In each instance, however, the observed
political changes, or the lack thereof, had multiple causes and points
of resistance. Each situation was characterized by a complex interaction
of End of page 217 diplomatic, military, and economic
influences. In no case were sanctions the definitive factor in bringing
about political change; but in each instance economic coercion played
at least some role in generating pressures for negotiation or compromise. A second continuum might usefully
correlate economic sanctions with civilian pain. For reasons indicated
in the early chapters by the editors and made concrete in the four country
studies, there are serious analytical and methodological difficulties
in establishing precise correlations. Perhaps the most daunting challenge
is disaggregating the effects of sanctions from other causes of social
distress. In South Africa, economic sanctions exacerbated problems ranging
from drought to militarization, from economic restructuring to urbanization
and global recession. Similarly, war and government oppression in Iraq,
war and the transition to a market economy in the former Yugoslavia, and
military repression in Haiti contributed to civilian distress. Despite
the complexities of multiple causality, the country cases demonstrate
the possibility of disaggregating the various factors at work and establishing
a rough correlation between sanctions and suffering. The connections between sanctions
and political change and those between sanctions and civilian pain point
toward a third set of relationships: between political change and human
suffering. Civilian pain is justified by the imposition of sanctions on
the grounds that it makes an indispensable contribution toward agreed
changes in policy by a targeted government. Suffering associated with
a failed political strategy is more difficult to justify than similar
suffering accompanying a successful political strategy. In either instance,
however, political options involve major humanitarian risks that should
be explicitly recognized. As a major study by the Carnegie Commission
on Preventing Deadly Conflict concludes, it is no longer possible to ignore
"the plight of innocent civilians, especially children and the elderly,
in countries that are the targets of comprehensive sanctions."5 Sanctions as a Policy Tool: Regime
Issues The country cases illustrate the variety
of sanctions experiences in the early post—Cold War period. The cases
are of sufficient unevenness and particularity, however, to suggest that
what exists is less what social scientists refer to as a "regime"
than a set of ad hoc arrangements, managed by improvisation, with little
consistency from one setting to the next. Moreover, there exist little
accountability and no agreed process for End of page 218 routine postsanctions evaluation.
A regime, by contrast, involves "principles, norms, rules, and decision-making
procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area."6
Critics of sanctions, among them some humanitarian organizations, have
identified the absence of consistent application of exemptions by the
United Nations and member states as an element undermining what arguably
is a nascent sanctions regime. Delays in processing requests for approval
of waivers for humanitarian matériel weaken the system further. Economic sanctions are authorized
under Article 41 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which also contains
provisions for the use of military force. Given the charter’s commitment
to the pacific settlement of disputes, forcible coercion is to be utilized
only after nonforcible options have been tried and exhausted. The case
studies, however, suggest two seemingly contradictory sets of complications. On the one hand, economic sanctions
are sometimes used as a prelude to military force rather than as an alternative
to it. In Iraq, Hoskins notes, "there was evidence, prior to January
1991," when the UN Security Council authorized the use of force,
that sanctions were having a powerful economic impact and "were indeed
causing hardship among the Iraqi population." Early suggestions that
options be prepared for an assessment of humanitarian and other impacts
were dismissed out of hand: such an assessment would be irrelevant for
the Security Council, which was clearly predisposed to authorize military
force.7 Indeed, the Iraq experience led humanitarian, religious,
and other groups that actively supported sanctions as an alternative to
war to conclude that such an approach was not given a serious chance to
succeed in the circumstances. "Economic sanctions and the UN Charter,"
wrote one of those who monitored the situation closely, "rather than
serving as the ‘threshold for peace,’ became a ‘trap door
to war.’"8 On the other hand, sanctions are also
faulted for preventing the prompt use of military force. To the extent
that economic sanctions are politically ineffective, the issue is particularly
excruciating. Sarah Zaidi recalls that many Haitians understandably asked,
"Why three years of suffering? Why not earlier intervention?"
Even when sanctions have ostensibly been more politically effective, as
in the former Yugoslavia, serious questions arise. The Implementation
Force’s (IFOR) more robust terms of engagement, had they accompanied
the deployment of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) troops three years
earlier, might have mooted the need to impose economic sanctions, with
their attendant pain. From both humanitarian and political standpoints
emerges the need to review the charter’s assumption that a graduated
application of first economic and End of page 219 then military coercion is necessarily
the best approach for all situations. Three observers summarized the irony:
"It seems that risk-averse policymakers and pacifistic humanitarians
have formed a common discourse on the merits of sanctions based on their
value as a symbolic rather than as a strategic instrument of international
concern."9 The complications from the four-country
experiences suggest the need for greater clarity in the objectives of
sanctions. In the words of former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali,
"While recognizing that the Council is a political body rather than
a judicial organ, it is of great importance that when it decides to impose
sanctions it should at the same time define objective criteria for determining
that their purpose has been achieved."10 The evidence
suggests that sanctions work better when objectives are clearly specified
and carefully targeted. Clear objectives permit analysts and governmental
decisionmakers to assess success or failure more precisely. Yet as the earlier discussion in this
chapter illustrates, even clearly specified objectives are difficult to
evaluate, all the more so when attaining them is not readily achieved
by external pressure. Finding durable solutions to ethnic tensions in
the former Yugoslavia, for instance, may be facilitated by sanctions but
will not be accomplished solely by them. Sanctions can pressure parties
to come to the negotiating table, as may have been the case in the former
Yugoslavia, but they are not a tool for creating lasting solutions to
ethnic violence. Sanctions and other political initiatives can help lay
the groundwork for reconciliation, but reknitting torn societies will
require more than externally imposed measures. One complicating factor is that sanctions,
discussed in the Security Council by representatives of UN member states
with diverse political perspectives and agendas, are born of compromise.
In the case of Iraq, the lead was taken by the United States and the United
Kingdom, which brought to bear great pressure on recalcitrant Security
Council members with divergent views. For example, when Yemen announced
its intention to vote against Resolution 678, authorizing the use of "all
necessary means" (that is, military force) to expel Iraq from Kuwait,
U.S. officials warned that this would be costly and threatened to deny
economic aid. After the Yemeni ambassador cast his country’s no vote,
Secretary of State James Baker observed that this had been "the most
expensive vote he had ever taken."11 The United States
moved quickly to cut off bilateral economic assistance. In the case of
the former Yugoslavia, the ambivalent and conflicting strategies of the
European Union (EU) and the United States played themselves out in the
Security Council and other forums, and the language of the resulting resolutions
often reflected the lack of agreement on objectives and means. End of page 220 Like other measures taken by politicians,
the formulation and imposition of sanctions involves a cosmetic or public
relations element. In the case of South Africa, there is a question whether
sanctions represented a bona fide attempt to dismantle apartheid or, as
in Crawford’s view, were undertaken "simply to placate domestic
constituencies or as symbolic expressions and punishment for apartheid."
What makes the application of sanctions attractive to politicians is not
necessarily what makes them effective in the country on which they are
imposed. In fact, there may be little correlation. A highly touted mechanism
for sending political messages, sanctions are sometimes less clear devices
for communication than expected and sometimes convey messages other than
those intended. As mentioned at the outset of this volume, it was not
so much a humanitarian preference for nonforcible sanctions that mattered;
rather, they were attractive because of the low domestic political costs
in Western countries, combined with virtually no loss in credibility in
failing, which would not have been the case with forcible sanctions. If sanctions are to be a means of
sending messages, the conditions of their imposition and of their lifting
might logically be occasions for discussions with the targeted authorities.
In the South African case, lengthy discussion preceded the imposition
of sanctions, clarifying their intent while also giving the government
and elites time to react. In the other cases, sanctions initially were
imposed more quickly, allowing little opportunity for discussion. If sanctions
are to serve as an instrument of diplomacy and persuasion, debate about
their terms of application may provide an occasion for dialogue, reducing
the likelihood of their eventual imposition. Closely related to the question of
the objectives of sanctions is the issue of their coverage. In several
cases, specifically targeted measures seem to have succeeded in catching
the attention of the authorities. In South Africa, divestment campaigns
seem to have been particularly effective in doing so. In the former Yugoslavia,
air travel, telecommunications, and sports boycotts seem to have been
the most telling. In Haiti, it was not until bank transfers by the elites
were interdicted that sanctions began to be taken seriously by the de
facto authorities, although even then the measure did not produce an immediate
policy change. There is also evidence to suggest,
however, that sanctions gained in effectiveness as they became more inclusive.
Only in the case of Iraq were sanctions comprehensive from the outset;
in other instances they became more so over time, as demonstrated by the
charts in each chapter. Those imposed against South Africa eventually
touched nearly every aspect of society, with the slow but steady strengthening
of cumulative End of page 221 pressure taking its toll on the apartheid
regime. In the former Yugoslavia, UN efforts to broaden the sanctions
and tighten their enforcement seemed to enhance their impact. In Haiti,
the substitution of comprehensive UN sanctions for partial OAS measures
sent a strong message of broad international condemnation and packed a
stronger economic wallop. Many in Haiti believed that had the embargo
been as comprehensive from the outset in September 1991 as it became three
years later, its early effectiveness would have been enhanced. Whether sanctions are broad or narrow,
leakage as a result of loose implementation or control weakens their impact.
Effectiveness is also circumscribed when some commercial items are intentionally
excluded. The revision of the embargo against Haiti to allow export to
the United States of manufactured items from U.S.-owned companies, for
example, sent a message that commercial benefits were more important than
political change. The U.S. government’s import into Haiti of oil
for its own uses from the Dominican Republic in violation of the embargo
was also less than helpful.12 If sanctions are to be effective
in sending a coherent political message, that message must be consistently
and unequivocally reinforced on the ground. The four cases examined here reflect
wide variations in how sanctions mechanisms are prepared, implemented,
monitored, adjusted, and removed. With respect to Iraq, sanctions followed
within less than a week the events that triggered them. In Haiti as well
initial OAS sanctions came swiftly and were promptly endorsed by the UN,
although more comprehensive UN sanctions followed a year and a half later.
In the cases of South Africa and the former Yugoslavia, sanctions came
only after extensive reflection and soul-wrenching debates and then were
implemented incrementally. Whether sufficient time exists, or
is taken, to review policy options before deciding on the nature and breadth
of a set of sanctions, one essential element is the anticipation of efforts
by the targeted authorities to subvert or blunt the sanctions’ effects.
As Crawford argues from the South Africa experience, "understanding
target resistance is essential." Contingency planning for resistance
and subversion needs to be incorporated into the initial discussions.
Resistance should be expected from private as well as government quarters.
The closing of normal commercial channels can be expected to generate
efforts by businessmen, sometimes with government blessing, to establish
illegal operations or parallel markets. Once such markets are established,
as the Yugoslav experience indicates, the creation of vested interests
in the continuation of sanctions can work against the achievement of their
political objectives. End of page 222 With respect to implementation, a
key question concerns the correlation between multilateralism and effectiveness.
Although the four sets of sanctions sooner or later received the UN’s
imprimatur, specific variations are potentially instructive. In the case
of South Africa, individual countries took the lead. In Haiti and the
former Yugoslavia, the initiative came from regional organizations–the
OAS and the EU. The correlation between multilateralism and effectiveness
is not clear, however. Although the broadest possible international political
consensus is helpful, there is no substitute for tough enforcement measures,
which may or may not be UN related. Moreover, individual governments play
a key role in shaping the contours of multilateral action. Thus in the
case of Haiti, pressure from Washington in the summer of 1994 led to a
tightening of the UN embargo, while unilateral U.S. actions such as the
suspension of air traffic and the freezing of Haitian assets reinforced
the bite of UN measures.13 This would suggest that a combination
of regional initiative, multilateral endorsement, and major-power support
may prove formidable. The UN General Assembly’s approval of sanctions
against South Africa made them legitimate, whereas the imposition by the
Security Council in the other three instances conveyed a less wide endorsement,
in the view of some, because of the less representative nature of the
council. There are important lessons to be
learned from the implementation of sanctions in Yugoslavia. The work of
sanctions assistance missions (SAMs) organized by the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe and other European institutions is
widely held to have injected overdue rigor into the monitoring process.
Those involved have concluded that the SAM system provided "valuable
assistance" in the implementation of sanctions and that the unprecedented
cooperation and support provided by European agencies was the "main
reason for the effectiveness of sanctions" against the former Yugoslavia.14
The fact that monitors worked only during daylight hours initially opened
the doors to considerable embargo-running during their off-hours. Subsequently,
military personnel at checkpoints received explicit instructions to be
implemented round the clock while the monitors were "on call,"
an arrangement that proved more effective. Nonetheless, the SAM system
may not be easily repeatable in settings that lack the legal and institutional
resources available to monitors along the Yugoslav borders. Regarding the removal of sanctions,
only one of the four sets of sanctions remains in place: those against
Iraq. Sanctions against South Africa were relaxed gradually: some were
removed after the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990, but others
remained in place until all- End of page 223 race multiparty elections were held.
In the case of the former Yugoslavia, they were also relaxed in stages,
with an initial lifting of some travel restrictions and the ban on participation
in cultural and sports activities waived in September 1994 following Belgrade’s
sealing of its border with Bosnia, and a complete lifting of UN sanctions
in November 1995, after the signing of the Dayton accord. The sequenced
removal of sanctions has not been without controversy. As indicated by
Devin and Dashti-Gibson, medical professionals in the former Yugoslavia
were critical of terminating the bans on sports and cultural exchanges
before ending those on critical medical supplies. There was also discussion
by U.S. officials in December 1996 of possible reimposition of sanctions
if President Milosevic failed to respect the results of November 1996
municipal elections in Serbia or if he used force against those demonstrating
in the streets. In the case of Haiti, sanctions were removed in late 1994
after the change of governments, following a false start in the previous
year. Chastened by the failure after the initial Governors Island agreement
in 1993, the UN did not lift sanctions again until the regime had truly
stepped aside and Aristide had been restored. The continuation of sanctions against
Iraq has been justified on the basis of Iraq’s refusal to comply
fully with Security Council Resolutions 687 and 688. Without discussing
here whether Iraq’s partial compliance with Resolution 687 merits
some easing of sanctions (a subject addressed below), or whether the prohibition
against internal repression in Resolution 688 is unenforceable, it is
hard to avoid the impression that sanctions have been maintained primarily
because of the American and British desire to punish and contain Iraq
and remove Saddam Hussein from power. These are not the purposes for which
sanctions were initially imposed. Moreover, the terrible human suffering
that continued sanctions have caused is unjustifiable in the absence of
any significant political gain.15 From recent experience, then, it is
clear that sanctions can take on a life of their own. They are easier
to impose than to implement, easier to levy than to lift. Given sanctions’
highly political nature, interpretations of their success may change over
time. Faulted for "moving the goalposts" as the game is being
played, backers of sanctions defend their evolution in a given setting
as a necessary response to changing political circumstances. As a political
device in a highly politicized setting, however, sanctions as they exist
today are highly vulnerable to politicization. Changes in both policy
and operation are needed if sanctions are to become more principled and
consistent, more effective and accountable–in short, to function
as an international regime rather than an ad hoc and arbitrary set of
mechanisms. End of page 224 Humanitarian Aspects In the four cases studied here, economic
sanctions had four major and largely negative implications for humanitarian
action. First, they were generally associated with increased humanitarian
requirements and stepped-up pressure on human rights. Second, the need
occasioned by sanctions often outran the capacity of humanitarian organizations
to respond. Third, sanctions impaired international responses because
relief supplies, while exempted from sanctions, still had to pass through
a sanctions framework and review process. Fourth, the independence and
effectiveness of humanitarian activities were often compromised by association
with the political agenda of sanctions. Sanctions often worsened the suffering
of those already affected by war or other serious difficulties. They often
broadened the ranks of sufferers to an even larger portion of the population,
and their effects fell disproportionately on the most vulnerable. The
result in some cases was to transform a situation of major humanitarian
needs into one of genuine humanitarian crisis. In Iraq, according to Hoskins,
"annual per capita income was estimated at $335 in 1988...and
fell to $65 in 1991 and $44 in 1992. These levels are far below the international
poverty line of $100 established by the World Bank. Based on personal
income and calorie-purchasing power, the prevalence of poverty has now
become greater in Iraq than in India." In addition, human rights
violations became "increasingly common" as the government confronted
the increasing desperation of Iraqi citizens. Impacts were also serious, if less
dramatic and well documented, in the former Yugoslavia. Devin and Dashti-Gibson
argue that sanctions "added to a vicious cycle of increasing needs
and decreasing resources." They "increased the needs of the
population while at the same time limiting the provision of health and
human services that relied on imported products." In Haiti as well,
sanctions added to the suffering caused by military repression and compounded
the problems of impoverishment and underdevelopment. In South Africa,
the health of the black majority population was appalling, although Crawford’s
data do not demonstrate that conditions were "severely degraded by
sanctions." The scale of the increased suffering
often outdistanced the ability of international organizations to respond.
Iraq’s dependence on imports for 70 percent of its food and 75 percent
of its medicines before sanctions meant disaster when these supplies were
cut off. Items in short supply in the health sector–medicines, vaccines,
syringes, anesthetics, and materials used for surgery, radiology, laboratory,
and diagnostic End of page 225 tests–were officially exempted
from sanctions. Obviously, the exemption curtailed the flow of items that
were avowedly intended to be unaffected. In the former Yugoslavia as well,
"United Nations sanctions spread the suffering experienced by refugees
to local populations," according to Devin and Dashti-Gibson. In late
1993, the population in Serbia for which UN programs were intended numbered
565,000, not all of whom were being reached. However, the UN estimated
that between 50 and 90 percent of the remaining 10 million Serbians experienced
serious sanctions-related hardships.16 In the health sector,
Devin and Dashti-Gibson note that "humanitarian aid could not compensate
for the lack of domestic resources." The magnitude of the distress alarmed
UN humanitarian officials on the ground in Belgrade. A memo sent to New
York in mid-1993 cast what UN staff were observing in broader terms. "The
imposition of economic sanctions will inevitably affect the humanitarian
situation in the area concerned. Declining local resources will always
result in declining standards of health care, education, housing, social
services, and so forth. The contradiction lies in imposing sanctions while
at the same time asking agencies of the UN system to provide humanitarian
aid."17 The impacts of sanctions were not
uniformly negative. In South Africa, for example, Crawford writes that
"most indicators of health continued to show some improvement...even
after the imposition of the most biting economic sanctions of the mid-1980s."
In Haiti during the time of sanctions, the budgets of some humanitarian
organizations such as UNICEF, the Panamerican Health Organization, Catholic
Relief Service, and CARE received significant increases, which benefited
particularly, in Zaidi’s view, "programs and projects designed
to cushion the effects of sanctions." Nonetheless, "additional
humanitarian relief was not enough to meet the needs." Impacts varied from country to country,
but nowhere were humanitarian activities able fully to compensate for
the additional hardship caused by sanctions. Many assume that humanitarian
pass-through arrangements offset or at least moderated such hardship.
However, a study carried out in 1995—1996 for the UN Department of
Humanitarian Affairs noted that "extensive experience in recent sanctions
cases has shown [that] humanitarian assistance cannot be expected to meet
all the basic needs of vulnerable groups and of the population at large."
The authors, Claudia von Braunmühl and Manfred Kulessa, conclude
that "the amount of information available today on the devastating
economic, social and humanitarian impacts of sanctions no longer permits
[the international community] to entertain the notion of ‘unintended
ef- End of page 226 fects.’"18 In
other words, sanctions should be expected to create hardship beyond the
capacities of agencies to cushion. An example cited by a senior UN humanitarian
official suggests a cavalier attitude on the part of sanctions proponents
toward civilian pain. Returning from a UN fact-finding mission to Iraq
in 1991, Prince Saddrudin Aga Khan detailed for the U.S. and UK ambassadors
the plight of Iraqi civilians. He was reportedly told brusquely to concentrate
on mopping up the damage rather than criticizing sanctions for their alleged
impacts. "That’s what you’re paid to do." At an off-the-record
discussion organized by the Humanitarianism and War Project in early 1994
on improvements needed in the international response to the situation
in the former Yugoslavia, an ambassador who served on the UN Security
Council dismissed all suggestions of changes in the practice of sanctions
as inimical to their basic purpose: to cause civilian suffering. To reform
sanctions, he said, would be to weaken them. Despite the exemptions allowed, sanctions
impaired the ability of humanitarian actors to import the requisite relief
supplies, equipment, and personnel. The hardships that resulted in Iraq,
the former Yugoslavia, and Haiti were serious. In the case of South Africa,
the magnitude of the problem is not documented. Resources were channeled
into South Africa through an array of multilateral, bilateral, nongovernmental
organization (NGO), and corporate programs and trust funds, although UN
agencies themselves were not present. Perhaps the best-documented difficulties
are those in Iraq. The original Security Council resolution of August
1990 did not include an exemption for foodstuffs for civilian consumption,
although Hoskins notes that this omission was corrected in April 1991
and may have been by default rather than by design. Once the monitoring
mechanism was in place, however, "shipments of humanitarian supplies
to Iraq" were delayed by an extensive search procedure; "legitimate
shipments destined for local consumption in Jordan" were also held
up. "The absence of any published lists of allowable items meant
that states, NGOs, private firms, and even United Nations agencies themselves
were forced to submit requests for nearly every item being considered
for import into Iraq." In the former Yugoslavia, the first
two years of the sanctions caused enormous hardship for humanitarian groups.
Interviewed in Belgrade in 1993, WHO officials noted that "sanctions
make the life of humanitarian organizations almost impossible." Not
only did they experience difficulty in importing essential items; requests
by local authorities also encountered difficulties. "In addition
to its time-consuming, case-by-case review of requests for commercial
drug imports, the Sanctions End of page 227 Committee refused to authorize imports
of raw materials from which a relatively advanced Serbian pharmaceutical
industry could manufacture drugs itself."19 The fact that
UN peacekeeping personnel experienced none of the difficulties encountered
by the UN’s humanitarian organizations made the situation particularly
irritating. As time passed, the Sanctions Committee instituted improvements
in its procedures for reviewing humanitarian exemption requests. The overall
experience is chronicled in the committee’s final report to the Security
Council, S/1996/946 of 15 November 1996. Management of exemptions also had
hidden costs, not only for humanitarian organizations but also for a wider
circle of institutions. Hoskins observes that in Iraq "sanctions
demand extraordinary amounts of time from all those concerned–agencies,
suppliers, shippers, as well as Sanctions Committee members…The international
community–almost without exception–has felt constrained and
incapacitated by the sanctions regime." Such was also the early experience
in the former Yugoslavia. Members of the committee spent their time in
the detailed review of exemption requests, with little consideration of
broad policy matters. More efficient and transparent pass-through arrangements
would have allowed greater attention by the Sanctions Committee, not to
say the Security Council itself, to the effects of sanctions–positive
and negative, political and humanitarian. In a 1995 letter, the five permanent
members of the Security Council addressed the humanitarian impact of sanctions.
"While recognizing the need to maintain the effectiveness of sanctions
imposed in accordance with the Charter," the ambassadors of China,
France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States
wrote, "further collective actions in the Security Council within
the context of any future sanctions regime should be directed to minimize
unintended adverse side-effects of sanctions on the most vulnerable segments
of targeted countries."20 The statement from "Perm
Five" is noteworthy not only for its expressed humanitarian concerns
but also for the view that existing sanctions are effective and constitute
a "regime." In interviews, senior UN humanitarian officials
have characterized such expressions of concern for humanitarian impacts
as "crocodile tears." They serve as "balms to the consciences
of people who know perfectly well the impacts of sanctions on civilians,"
commented one who requested anonymity. The sanctions committees themselves
have taken steps to streamline the review process. It is no longer true,
as Hoskins wrote of Iraq, that "Every spare part required by a UN
agency or NGO [must] go before the Sanctions Committee for approval."
"No-objection" procedures allow agencies to proceed with shipments
within a time certain unless a End of page 228 member of a sanctions committee raises
questions. Major agencies such as the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross confirm
that significant improvements have been made, in part as a result of their
own initiatives in New York. But smaller agencies, particularly those
without close ties to the UN system, still experience difficulties. Moreover,
agencies that pride themselves on their nonpolitical nature must have
individual governments plead their case in the UN review process. The theory and practice of sanctions
has been the subject of recent intergovernmental debate in the Subgroup
on the Question of United Nations Sanctions of the Informal Open Ended
Working Group, created by the UN General Assembly to review proposals
in the secretary-general’s Agenda for Peace. The subgroup’s
recommendations begin with the observation that "an effectively implemented
regime of collective Security Council sanctions can operate as a useful
international policy tool in the graduated response to threats to international
peace and security." Approaching sanctions as "a matter of utmost
seriousness and concern," the subgroup urges that "sanctions
should only be resorted to with utmost caution, when other peaceful options
provided by the Charter are inadequate" and with "as thorough
consideration as possible to the short and long term effects." A
number of recommendations are made to facilitate the work of aid organizations,
including "Further improvements in the working methods of sanctions
committees that promote transparency, fairness and effectiveness."
The subgroup urges that "the concept of ‘humanitarian limits
of sanctions’ deserves further attention and standard approaches
should be elaborated by relevant U.N. bodies."21 Humanitarian organizations differ
in their assessments of how effective actual reforms have been and how
much can be expected of additional ones now under discussion. Larger agencies
seem to be experiencing fewer difficulties in 1996 than earlier; some
smaller agencies, especially those that are reluctant to seek the political
support of member states, may still experience problems. Some analysts
have dismissed the reforms as "minor procedural changes to defuse
the dissatisfaction" of Security Council members.22 Whatever
the current situation, it is apparent that further changes are needed.
Fully cognizant of recent developments, the DHA study made a sweeping
but constructive recommendation: that "established international
institutions, when acting within their recognized humanitarian assistance
mandate, should not be subjected to sanctions regimes."23 Sanctions also situate humanitarian
efforts on highly politicized terrain, creating discomfort for humanitarian
agencies that often prefer to End of page 229 think of themselves as apolitical.
Sanctions also associate humanitarian actors with highly unpopular political
measures. Humanitarian activities carried out within the framework of
economic sanctions are inevitably caught in serious contradictions. Since
"imposing sanctions is by definition a political act, [it] is therefore
inevitable that the delivery of humanitarian services is a component of
that political act, and that entails politicization of humanitarian efforts."24
The negative impacts of sanctions place aid officials in what many believe
are untenable and contradictory positions. Employed by governmental, intergovernmental,
and nongovernmental organizations, they are part of a system that is pressing
to bring about political change. At the same time, they witness firsthand
the damage to civilian life and infrastructure that may undermine the
prospects for such change. "Humanitarian agencies, particularly those
within the UN system, have felt uneasy being so closely associated with
both the implementation and the enforcement of sanctions," Hoskins
observes. "Many of the system’s humanitarian personnel have
misgivings about the role of the world organization as both sanctioner
and caregiver." Exercising what they considered their
ethical obligation as professionals, ranking officials of the World Health
Organization (WHO), the UN High Commission for Refugees, and the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Belgrade
noted "the detrimental effect of the sanctions on the health of the
people and on the health care system." UNHCR’s chief of mission
in Belgrade reached the conclusion in late 1993 that "trying to implement
a humanitarian program in a sanctions environment represents a fundamental
contradiction."25 Functioning in Haiti also raised similar
ethical dilemmas. Zaidi notes that publicly voiced criticisms of sanctions
played into the hands of the de facto authorities, while silence appeared
to be acquiescence to the suffering of civilians. Humanitarian officials
were hard-pressed to maintain international solidarity while remaining
fully integrated into a political strategy aimed at international isolation. Sanctions may undercut the effectiveness
as well as the credibility of humanitarian activities. In the case of
the former Yugoslavia, the unpopularity of economic sanctions, associated
by the Milosevic government, and indeed by the people of Serbia and Montenegro,
with the United Nations, was transferred to aid activities carried out
by the UN and affiliated groups. The absence of an embargo against Croatia
and the management of aid efforts in Serbia from Zagreb confirmed suspicions
about a nefarious and one-sided political agenda. The padding of beneficiary
lists and other actions by local Serb officials to undermine relief activities
became acts of defiance making programs hard to ad End of page 230 minister. In Haiti, sanctions also
illuminated a kind of schizophrenia within the United Nations system.
In this case, however, the schism tended to be among humanitarian agencies
rather than between them and the political and peacekeeping sides of the
world organization.26 In sum, humanitarian action within
the framework provided by economic sanctions has often produced the worst
of all possible worlds. By their mission, emergency relief and human rights
agencies are thrust into situations of exacerbated and acute human needs
and physical peril. At the same time, they are expected to cushion the
additional impacts of sanctions among civilians, a task well beyond their
means. Their responsiveness is impaired by the strictures of sanctions,
even though improvements have been made in the exemption process. Their
integrity is called into question by recipient populations, who associate
humanitarian organizations with the purveyors of sanctions, and by sanctioners,
who perceive relief efforts as softening the bite of sanctions. The Pain-and-Gain Calculus The four case studies and accompanying
analytical material in this volume have explored the necessary and inevitable
tensions between the pain of economic sanctions for civilian populations
and the resulting political gains. In both practice and theory, the separation
of pain from gain and the analysis of either in isolation from the other
has proved impossible. In the real world of opprobrious political leaders
and vulnerable populations, decisionmakers understand the pain caused
by economic coercion. For their part, humanitarian actors and vulnerable
peoples have a stake in changing the behavior of repressive authorities
by political means. The challenge of framing the pain-and-gain
calculation and of managing sanctions initiatives was well stated by the
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. An article
in its World Disaster Report 1995 provided a careful review of the risks
associated with sanctions experienced in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia,
and Haiti. Drawing on its experience in these three countries as well
as on discussions in Geneva and New York of the policy issues at stake,
the federation framed the issue as follows: With its Fundamental Principles
and the Geneva Conventions, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent
Movement has a duty to assist those suffering, including those who live
under sanctions. When it finds that those sanctions are End of page 231 designed and implemented
to systematically affect vulnerable groups, that their impact is so
severe that ever-wider sections of the population sink into poverty,
that humanitarian aid is totally inadequate and humanitarian agencies
are denied the means to operate, then there is a need to ask of the
Security Council: Where is the balance between politics and humanitarianism?27 In assessing that balance, analysts
confront serious methodological difficulties in both the political and
the humanitarian realms. The complexities of measuring political gain
were explored earlier–how can analysts explain the motivations of
a targeted regime or disaggregate the influence of sanctions from other
factors? Sanctions played at least some role in exerting pressure on targeted
leaders in each of the four cases; but their effectiveness varied from
case to case, and their overall impact was ambiguous. On the humanitarian side, the challenge
is also to disaggregate sanctions effects from other factors. The complexity
of the methodological task, discussed in chapter 2, has been more than
amply demonstrated by the cases. In each instance, sanctions exacerbated
already existing hardships. In South Africa, Crawford notes that the impacts
of sanctions were hard to "disentangle" from the consequences
of "apartheid, drought, militarization, economic restructuring, urbanization,
and global recession." In the case of Iraq, the decade-long war with
Iran had taken its toll, as did the 1991 Gulf War, before sanctions added
to the causes of suffering. Devin and Dashti-Gibson point out
that in the former Yugoslavia, the combination of war and its dislocations,
huge refugee flows, and the austerity measures associated with the post—Cold
War transition to a market economy were already causing hardship among
civilians before sanctions were imposed. The consequences of the loss
of trade with markets in what was once Yugoslavia wreaked greater hardship
among civilians in Serbia and Montenegro than did the loss of foreign
trade due to sanctions. In Haiti, Claudette Werleigh has argued that the
coup d’état "and not the embargo was the root cause of
any suffering."28 Zaidi agrees that the impacts of the
sanctions there "cannot be separated from the human rights abuses
perpetrated by the coup and Haiti’s deep-rooted and widespread poverty."
Notwithstanding how much the problems
predating and complicating sanctions caused major suffering among civilians,
each of the chapters found demonstrable, if not always quantifiable, links
between sanctions and civilian pain. Crawford’s analysis shows that
sanctions in South Africa had direct effects that caused hardships, although
she also identi End of page 232 fies indirect effects that in some
ways benefited black workers. The case of Iraq is less ambiguous. Hoskins
presents evidence that "the number of deaths that have occurred as
a result of war-related damage and the continued application of sanctions...has
greatly surpassed the number of civilian casualties during the war itself."
His review of the impacts in the water, health, agriculture, and education
sectors documents that "it has been the impact of sanctions, not
war-related damage, that has been most responsible for the continued hardship
and suffering of the Iraqi population." In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,
according to Devin and Dashti-Gibson, sanctions "increased the needs
of the population while at the same time limiting the provision of health
and human services that relied on imported products." Their careful
formulation is noteworthy because sanctions did not cause but rather "accelerated
the decline of the FRY’s health care system and created a dependence
on international humanitarian assistance." Zaidi’s analysis
shows that conditions in Haiti violated minimum humanitarian standards
and that the imposition of sanctions in this situation caused inevitable
hardships. In sum, the cases in this volume confirm
that economic sanctions are, in the words of former UN Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a "blunt instrument."29 Uneven
in political utility, they are nevertheless capable of causing serious
humanitarian consequences. When political gain is evident, civilian pain
seems tolerable and justifiable. Such was the case in Haiti and South
Africa, where, in addition, the vast majority of the population embraced
the pain of sanctions as a pos |