This book examines the application of UN Security Council’s mandatory sanctions since 1946, and, in particular, the regimes adopted for specific types of conflict. It addresses four distinct threats to peace and security: interstate conflicts, intrastate conflicts, norm-breaking states and terrorism.

Systematically analyzes the impacts and the effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions over the past quarter century.

Instead of asking whether international sanctions work, this book addresses a more basic question: how do coercive international sanctions work, and what are the social conditions within sanctions conflicts that are conducive to either cooperation or non-cooperation?

The 1990s have been labeled the ‘Sanctions Decade’, since they witnessed an unprecedented intensification of the use of collective non-military enforcement measures, and in particular sanctions, by the post-Cold War reactivated Security Council. This Research Handbook studies the current practice of UN sanctions in international law, their interrelationship with other regimes and substantive areas of law, as well as issues arising from their implementation and application at the domestic level.

Since the end of the Cold War, economic sanctions have been a frequent instrument of UN authority. Based on more than 200 interviews with officials from both sides, this book aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of UN sanctions in the 1990s.

The United Nations Security Council has increasingly resorted to sanctions as part of its efforts to prevent and resolve conflict. In this 2007 book, Farrall traces the evolution of the Security Council's sanctions powers and charts the contours of the UN sanctions system. He also evaluates the extent to which the Security Council's increasing commitment to strengthening the rule of law extends to its sanctions practice. The book identifies shortcomings in respect of key rule of law principles and advances pragmatic policy-reform proposals designed to ensure that UN sanctions promote, strengthen and reinforce the rule of law. In its appendices United Nations Sanctions and the Rule of Law contains summaries of all 25 UN sanctions regimes established to date by the Security Council. It forms an invaluable source of reference for diplomats, policymakers, scholars and advocates.

The main theme of the book is that the new types of sanctions constitute a challenge to the international system. First, there are more of the targeted sanctions, including financial, travel, aviation, special commodity and arms sanctions. Furthermore, there are considerable but varied practices in implementation. Also there are now sanctions by new actors (regional bodies, international organizations). These all put new strains on international bodies in carrying out sanctions or getting member states to work together in these efforts. These challenges are analyzed in this volume, with some examples, but mostly from a generalist perspective. A completely novel aspect is that this volume also includes studies of the difficulties that are met by targeting actors, their way of managing the situations, and most interesting, the human rights of such actors.