Sanctions and human rights: the role of sanction in international security, peace building and the protection of civilian's rights and well-being: case studies of Iran and Zimbabwe

Abstract

A broad and continuously growing range of situations have been determined by the United Nations Security Council as threatening or breaching international peace and security, thereby favouring the use of sanctions. The Security Council, while occasionally authorizing the use of military force has changed its strategy to employ non-military measures in order to enforce compliance with its decisions. The rationale often cited for imposing sanctions is the hope to resolve a conflict without mass suffering and other negative consequences associated with war. This study puts this assumption into context by using Zimbabwe and Iran as case studies to examine whether the use of sanctions is a plausible way to achieve international peace and security or if it is actually problematic to resolving the issues that lead to sanctions. It concludes that our present world system requires an overhaul, where violent mechanisms will be substituted with selfless diplomacy and the moral imagination of peace.