Economic Sanctions: How to Make International Trade a Legal Right Instead of a Privilege

Abstract

The wave of new economic trade sanctions in the world needs the comprehension of the grounds and potential consequences of this phenomenon. The author summarizes the annual reports of the UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of the unilateral coercive measurers for 2015–2022. Also, the paper explains why the “broken windows theory” is relevant to unilateral economic sanctions imposed by developed countries against developing countries. Analyzing the results of voting in the UN for non-specific country sanction issue resolutions, the author proves that the developed countries and European developing countries except Russia usually support economic sanctions as a policy tool which is unlikely for non-European developing countries. The increase in multi-regionalism facilitated by imposed or potential economic sanctions is a factor which could lead to the collapse of the unilateral system of international trade regulations under the WTO scope. Finally, the paper offers to unblock the Doha Round of WTO negotiations through a switch from multilateral agreement ideology to plurilateral agreement ideology, starting from signing an in-depth and comprehensive anti-economic sanctions agreement initiated by the BRICS member states.

Keywords

• brics
• economic sanctions
• unilateral coercive measures
• wto
• international trade
• agreement
• multilateralism