Economic Sanction and Public International Law: An Overview

Abstract

Economic sanctions or economic restriction has been very frequent in recent times. This study was concluded to find out if use of economic sanctions are justified under international law and what are the norms of international law regarding economic sanctions. International law does not address this properly. UN charter allows UNSC to take action when there is a threat to world peace and security but such use of word is quite vague and it also dose not address the sanctions imposed by individual states which creates more confusion regarding its legality which is discussed further in this study. Many times, sanctions fail to achieve their goal but still cause great damage to the targeted states economy and human right situation of such state. As we saw in case of Myanmar and South Africa that they were mostly able to evade sanctions imposed on them but still the economy and the citizen suffered a lot due to the effects of such economic sanctions imposed on them. During this study it was observed that even though economic sanction can be a good alternative of armed conflict many times it causes more harm than good.