Abstract
Commodity sanctions take a special place in the UN ’s coercive policy arsenal. They are part of almost every UN sanctions regime and have been subject to the most extensive reforms. Yet, their underlying utility has never been analyzed and thus, more often than not, they are deployed either as holdovers of past economic warfare practices, or to serve extraneous interests. Infamous as the ill-fated oil for food effort in the unrealistic and excessive Iraq sanctions, as part of the comprehensive regime against Haiti , and more recently in Libya and the DPRK , sanctions on the extraction and trade of raw materials regularly overshoot their political purpose. Recently, new forms of commodity sanctions that operationalize certification systems and corporate responsibility schemes are on the rise. As such, they serve not only the interests of advocacy groups; they also promote business interests as marketing tools for accessing global commodity markets. Such extraneous purposes serve the cause of international peace and security as little as does their deployment as a tool of economic warfare.
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Notes
- 1.
In a narrow political sense, Attica circumscribed the immediate agglomeration of communities around Athens but in a commercial sense, it involved all of the Attic Peninsula, and during the peak military strength of Athens an even larger region of influence.
- 2.
The consequences of Nande’s relative isolation from Congo’s governing bodies and what it meant for their political and economic autonomy were observed by many researchers. Examples are Entrepreneurs and Parasites by Janet McGaffey, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987: “However, geographical distance from the central government also meant that the Nande were to some extent beyond its control.” Or more recently, Patience Kabamba remarked in Business of Civil War, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2013, p. 12: “The Nande had never had good relations with the Congo’s central government, and since Independence have constantly worked outside the state structure.”
- 3.
“System D” was a colloquial term common among Congolese that referred to Mobutu Sese Seko’s alleged unwritten clause to his constitution: “Débrouillez-vous pour vivre,” implying that government officials would not request any capacity to carry out their job as they were expected to enrich and enable themselves with corruption.
- 4.
Janet MacGaffey states: “ …it was general knowledge in the town of Butembo in 1980 that the basis for the prosperity of many Nande businesses was the illegal gold trade, which brought plentiful supplies of otherwise unobtainable imports.” See: Entrepreneurs and Parasites: The struggle for indigenous capitalism in Zaire, Cambridge University Press, 1987, page 147.
- 5.
Enrico Carisch, was the author of that particular recommendation as a member of the UN Group of Experts at the time .
- 6.
The General Assembly endorsed the Kimberley Process in December 2000 with Resolution A/RES/55/56 and the Security Council followed in January 2003 with Resolution 1459.
- 7.
Global Witness published Taylor Made: The Pivotal Role of Liberia’s Forests and Flag of Convenience in Regional Conflict (September 2001); Logging Off: How the Liberian Timber Industry Fuels Liberia’s Humanitarian Disaster and Threatens Sierra Leone (September 2002); The Usual Suspects: Liberia’s Weapons and Mercenaries in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Why it’s Still Possible, How it Works, and How to Break the Trend (March 2003); For a Few Dollar$ More: How al Qaeda Moved into the Diamond Trade (April 2003); and more.
- 8.
The question about how the international community intended to compensate for the economic losses resulting from the timber ban was raised to the attention of the Liberia Sanctions Committee by Enrico Carisch, while he served as the finance expert of the UN ’s Panel of Experts on Liberia for two mandates under Resolution 1458/2003 and 1478/2003.
- 9.
Enrico Carisch’s interview with officials of OCHA and the delegation of the Permanent Mission of Portugal which chaired at the time the sanctions committee on Libya.
- 10.
See, for example, Bessler, Manuel, Richard Garfield, and Gerard McHugh (2004). “Sanctions Assessment Handbook: Assessing the Humanitarian Implications of Sanctions.” United Nations: Inter-Agency Standing Committee.
- 11.
The practical application of the scorched earth strategy was explained by General Ulysses S. Grant in his Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, under Chap. 25. The memoirs are freely available and can be downloaded from the Internet, for example, here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4367/4367-h/4367-h.htm#ch10 (accessed 29 April 2017).
- 12.
See, for example, the ongoing discourse on Almulish.org, a website reflecting views of contemporary Islamists and experts.
- 13.
The Suras and specific Quranic verses are: Al Nisā’ IV/3,24,25,36; Al Nahl XVI/71; Al Mu’minūn XXIII/6; Al Maʽārij LXX/30; Al Nūr XXIV/32,33,58; Al Rūm XXX/28; and Al Ahzāb XXXIII/50,55.
- 14.
The validity of the underlying Islamic legal principles and their interpretation for practical purposes have been the subject of intense discussions by scholars throughout the history of Islam. Generally considered to be an issue of the past, it has received strong fresh attention in the context of slavery now practiced by combatants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL ).
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Carisch, E., Rickard-Martin, L., Meister, S.R. (2017). Commodity Sanctions. In: The Evolution of UN Sanctions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60005-5_8
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