The Proportionality of Unilateral “Targeted” Sanctions: Whose Interests Should Count?

Comprehensive sanctions were considered to be disproportionate in their collateral
effects for the harm caused to the populations of sanctioned States. With the
emergence of the concept of targeted sanctions, questions regarding proportionality
were expected to fade away. After all, targeted sanctions were supposed to be
inherently proportional precisely because they were targeted. Nevertheless, the use of
selective embargoes, also known as sectoral sanctions, continues to give rise to issues
of proportionality. One of the lacunas of the current system is there is no uniform
proportionality standard that applies to unilateral sanctions as these measures fall with different types of legal regimes, each with their own proportionality standard. Drawing from recent State practice and the existing legal standards, the present contribution maps the respective interests that should inform proportionality discussions in distinct sanctions regimes and explores to what extent the proportionality principle can account for each of these interests.