The Scope of the Study

Over the past decade, international sanctions have featured prominently in state practice. Not surprisingly they have also received considerable attention in the news media, in public debate and in scholarly writing.1 A series of high-profile cases of sanctioning outside the United Nations framework began in late 1979 with the response to the Tehran hostages crisis and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan; sanctions were also imposed following the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981, in the Falklands war in 1982, and against Libya in 1986. In all of these cases, with the exception of the Falklands war, the United States was the initiator and main proponent of collective measures. Sanctions ordered by the UN Security Council on Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) were formally lifted in December 1979 in the wake of a settlement providing for full independence with majority rule, but discussion and debate continued with intermittent vigour in the UN and other international forums on the pros and cons of applying economic sanctions to South Africa. The institutionalised system of racial discrimination (apartheid) which denies political rights to South African blacks, as well as South Africa’s continued administration of Namibia in defiance of UN and World Court rulings, provide moral and legal grounds for sanctions in this case. A mandatory embargo on arms sales to South Africa was imposed by the Security Council in 1977 and in 1985 unprecedented and sustained levels of internal unrest in South African black townships, accompanied by renewed repression by the authorities, brought widespread calls for stronger measures to which western governments proved more responsive than in the past. In July the Security Council encouraged UN members to adopt voluntary sanctions and in September the United States, European Community members and other western governments took some action on this recommendation. In October Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in the Bahamas agreed on a set of mild penalties with a commitment to review the situation in six months’ time. In the long run it is not impossible that mandatory economic sanctions may be imposed against South Africa.