Riktade FN-sanktioner och rule of law i folkrätten

Sammanfattning: This thesis analyzes United Nations targeted sanctions from the perspective of international law. Targeted UN sanctions consist predominantly of the freezing of assets through blacklisting of individuals and other private law entities. Targeted UN sanctions have been criticized for not complying with such legal safeguards as normally apply to the exercise of power over individuals and are thus related to other controversial aspects of the so-called war on terrorism. Most of the objections to targeted UN sanctions presuppose that sanctions under Article 41 of the UN Charter are equivalent to peacetime enforcement measures. This thesis explores whether targeted UN sanctions ought not instead to be seen as a form of economic warfare. This view would seem to be consistent with the UN Charter’s wording and object and purpose, as well as with Security Council and member state practice.Economic warfare includes non-forcible measures regularly taken alongside or instead of armed hostilities. It is a wartime instrument that is compatible with the rule of law among nations and at least in certain circumstances undoubtedly included in the UN Charter collective security system. What is disputed, and investigated in this thesis, is if this may also be the case when UN sanctions are imposed without connection to an ongoing international armed conflict, i.e. if the operation of Chapter VII of the UN Charter in and of itself means that the measures taken may properly be assessed according to the laws of war. Under the laws of war blacklisting is not a measure of criminal law but an attribution of enemy character, which is an international legal status determining against whom measures of economic warfare may be directed. The freezing of financial assets without judicial review is permissible under the laws of war pertaining to economic warfare. The thesis concludes that the criticism against targeted UN sanctions would seem to be largely misguided de lege lata.