Book Reviews Starck, Dorothee, Die Rechtmässigkeit von UNO-Wirtschaftssanktionen in Anbetracht ihrer Auswirkungen auf die Zivilbevölkerung. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2000. Pp. 473. Index. DM178, CHF133.50. As the bibliography of this book attests, much has been published on sanctions in the last 10 years. With many political scientists and international affairs scholars equating sanctions with weapons of mass destruction or treating them as a new form of genocide, a solid scholarly work by an international lawyer is all the more to be welcomed, particularly one that is as thorough and systematic in its approach as this one. In her investigation into the legality of United Nations' economic sanctions and their impact on civilian populations, the author first discusses the theoretical limits on and requirements of Security Council actions before studying empirical evidence from the field (Iraq and Yugoslavia) and, finally, measuring it against those limits. The conclusions take a middle-of-the-road position in that the author rejects arguments that sanctions are genocide, a failure to prevent genocide, a form of torture or inadmissible because counter to self-determination or development. But the findings are, nonetheless, highly critical of sanctions and, most especially, of the United Nations body decreeing them under Chapter VII. It is particularly the jus cogens development of human rights law and humanitarian law which has created the restraints on economic sanctions which the Security Council has taken so little heed of. Under the first heading, it is largely the right to life and the prohibition on starving civilian populations when read together with the second one - humanitarian law principles of free passage (IV Geneva Convention, Article 23), the special protection of vital goods and systems (Protocol I, Article 54(2)) and assistance to populations in distress (Protocol I, Article 70) - that the Security Council sanctions practice is found to fall far short of contemporary jus cogens demands. But it is in its treatment of the Security Council itself that the book shows how much things have changed since Hans Kelsen's day. Since that body is not representative of the membership, its interpretations of international law and the Charter do not constitute an opinio juris of its members, nor does large-scale acquiescence by those members have any customary law generative effects, and thus its sanctions are not entirely binding on members if they violate overriding requirements of international law and, in any case, should not be applied to other branches of the United Nations, the Red Cross/Red Crescent or NGOs with humanitarian functions. The attempts of the Council to introduce humanitarian mitigation into its measures have been inadequate at best, and in some respects have actually exacerbated the touchy legal situation where an organ of international governance of such high dignity starts violating basic jus cogens principles. The basis for this position, ultimately more political than legal, is that blockade-running of humanitarian goods is less de-legitimising than Security Council actions which endanger the lives of civilian populations. There is also some discussion of mobilising other United Nations organs and systems as well as NGOs to contain the Security Council's intemperate activities as well as a recommendation that greater reliance on smart sanctions would eliminate these problems and restore Security Council legitimacy. In all this, the author, a legal rather than a political or diplomatic scholar, is aware of the constraints that international law places on radical changes in the status quo as well as of the dangers of upsetting delicate balances. The author feels that the Security Council's lack of regard for international law has done more damage in Iraq than it did in Yugoslavia. More critically, one can question the reliability of much of the empirical material cited, but this should not detract from the book's usefulness, for what we need in future cases is not more empirical data on undernourishment and mortality but better elaboration of the legal framework of Chapter VII measures. The irrepressible ascendancy of soft law made the questions and answers of this book inevitable, and we should be grateful to the author for having worked them out with such system and clarity. But whether the insurgency of soft law against hard law in a case like this will be a corrective, a supplement or a replacement, and what new equilibrium will ultimately emerge, is a matter for the future to decide. Transjuris eK Munich Paul Conlon
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