Thomas J Biersteker, Rebecca Brubaker, David Lanz. Global Governance. Volume 28, Issue 2, April-June 2022.
Introduction
UN Security Council sanctions are always applied in conjunction with other policy instruments when the Council addresses threats to international peace and security. UN sanctions coexist with mediation, negotiation, or diplomatic pressure in all of the Targeted Sanctions Consortium country sanctions regimes, and were present in the three UN sanctions regimes that preceded that study (Rhodesia, South Africa, and Iraq) and the one that has succeeded it (Mali). Despite this, most sanctions research, like most mediation research, tends to analyze the effectiveness of only one policy tool in isolation, rather than their potential interactive effects. Given the frequency with which sanctions and mediation are applied simultaneously by the UN, this and the other articles included in this special section of the journal explore their interactions. Detailed country case studies of internationalized intrastate armed conflicts, some with counterterrorism elements present, illustrate the effectiveness of sanctions threats, their utility in maintaining peace agreements, as well as some of the problems associated with the lack of regional buy-in or the absence of unity of purpose among Security Council members. While we can identify instances in which sanctions can be used to complement mediation, we can also identify instances in which they can undermine mediation efforts. The point of this special section is to go beyond this initial observation to begin to sketch out some of the conditions under which either outcome is more likely, as well as to indicate other details of the complex interrelationships between sanctions and mediation.
This overview article proceeds by reviewing the existing literature on the relationship between UN sanctions and mediation, followed by a description of a multiyear applied research project examining UN sanctions and mediation (the UN Sanctions and Mediation Project [SMP]) managed by the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research. A discussion of the general findings of that research follows, and the article concludes with suggestions of policy recommendations and potential directions for future research.
UN Sanctions and Mediation in the Literature
To understand the relationships between UN sanctions and mediation, we first turn to the literature for pointers from existing research. Current sanctions scholarship focuses on targeted sanctions: applications of restrictive measures by a state, regional, or international organization to coerce targets to change their behavior, constrain them from engaging in proscribed activities, or signal a violation of international norms. These measures include, but are not limited to, economic sanctions, and are applied against states, individuals, nonstate actors, sectors of activity, or regions of a country. Targeted sanctions differ from comprehensive sanctions, as they are not applied on an entire country and its population, but are designed, with varying degrees of success, to affect only those relevant to the policy purposes of the tool. UN sanctions are imposed by the Security Council under Chapter VII (Article 41) of the Charter. Since 1994, all sanctions imposed by the Security Council have been targeted, rather than comprehensive.
Mediation is equally based on the UN Charter, as it is listed as a method for the pacific settlement of disputes in Chapter VI (Article 33), along with negotiation, enquiry, conciliation, arbitration, and judicial settlement. The UN Secretary-General defines international mediation as “a process whereby a third party assists two or more parties, with their consent, to prevent, manage or resolve a conflict by helping them to develop mutually acceptable agreements.” The UN can itself act as a mediator, based on the Secretary-General’s good offices or on a Security Council mandate. Additionally, the UN mandates others, for example, regional organizations, to mediate, and it provides support for these endeavors. Mediation styles differ, with the UN usually adopting facilitative approaches focused on building trust between the parties and structuring their process of negotiation. Other mediators, in particular large states, use power-based styles, bringing leverage to bear on the negotiating parties to achieve an agreement.
Sanctions and mediation differ in a number of ways. Most importantly, mediation requires the willingness of conflict parties, whereas sanctions are generally imposed on parties against their will. Therefore, scholars and policymakers “have typically interpreted sanctions to be a middle-point in a continuum of instruments that has diplomacy on one end and the use of military force on the other.” In other words, sanctions are located “between words and war in the global system.” At the same time, sanctions and mediation have much in common: they both provide alternatives to war and, therefore, they are primary instruments to promote peace and security within the collective security system of the UN. Not surprisingly, sanctions and mediation are often applied in conjunction. The UN Security Council imposed sanctions in twentythree conflict situations between 1990 and 2015, and in 97 percent of the distinct case episodes within them, there were also peace negotiations, many of them mediated. Likewise, the vast majority of the fifty peace negotiation processes that were ongoing in 2019 as per a list produced by the Escola de Cultura de Pau took place in contexts where sanctions in some form are present. This convergence seems especially common in the context of Africa, where 63 percent of all UN sanctions regimes have been located. For example, Laurie Nathan found that of the fourteen coup d’ etats that took place in Africa in 2000-2014, 86 percent were mediated by the African Union (AU) or sub-regional organizations, 73 percent were subject to AU sanctions, and 91 percent were subject to wider international sanctions.
Despite the many interactions between sanctions and mediation, the existing literature tells us little about the effects of their interactions. There is no framework to understand under what conditions they undermine or reinforce each other. This is partly due to limited interactions between sanctions and conflict resolution scholars. According to Mikael Eriksson and Peter Wallensteen, “For the most part, the two research fields have been kept separate from each other.” Practitioners in the two fields also operate in silos, and, as Section 3 explains, this gap was one of the main rationales for creating the UN Sanctions and Mediation Project.
However, even in the absence of a robust theory, the literature offers relevant insights, which have helped orient empirical research and, based on which, a number of propositions about the relationship between UN sanctions and mediation can be formulated. To this end, it is worth considering different factors identified by sanctions and mediation research to explain the effectiveness of each approach.
The question “Do sanctions work?” has been the dominant theme and subject of extensive debates in the literature and among policymakers. In this regard, researchers from the Targeted Sanctions Consortium found that UN sanctions are effective in coercing, constraining, or signaling a target on average 22 percent of the time. Effectiveness varies, however, depending on the specific policy goal pursued through UN sanctions. When the objective is to coerce a change of the target’s behavior, always a very difficult goal, sanctions are effective only 10 percent of the time. When UN sanctions are applied to constrain targets and change their cost-benefit calculation, or when they are employed to send a signal to targets and stigmatize certain activities, effectiveness increases to 27 percent. The threat of sanctions may be even more effective than their application, and it is important to recall that the conflicts to which the Security Council applies sanctions tend to be among the most difficult and intractable to solve. We can therefore expect a mixed outcome when UN sanctions are specifically aimed to advance the negotiated settlement of a conflict. In this regard, Paul Bentall explains that when sanctions are deployed purposefully in negotiations processes, to target specific actors and achieve specific aims, the likelihood of complementarity increases. Conversely, when sanctions objectives differ or when the Security Council uses purposefully vague wording in its resolutions, contradictions emerge.
Research on mediation effectiveness equally yields relevant insights. There is no unified framework theorizing mediation success, as the issue continues to be the subject of much debate among scholars. Nonetheless, scholars generally recognize three conditions to be conducive to a successful outcome of mediation processes. The first relates to the preferences of the conflict parties. According to I. William Zartman, a negotiated settlement is possible when the parties perceive a “mutually hurting stalemate” in the form of a belief that they cannot win the war on the battlefield and that the costs of hostilities have become too high. This makes them receptive to a compromise solution delivered through mediated negotiations with their opponents. Sanctions can help bring about a stalemate when they are deployed as “economic tools of peacemaking,” according to David Cortright. When combined with economic incentives, sanctions can change the cost-benefit calculation of conflict parties and facilitate the conclusion of a settlement agreement, as was the case in the former Yugoslavia when sanctions helped convince Slobodan Milosevic to sign the Dayton Agreement in 1994. In a similar vein, Jennifer Welsh as well as researchers from UNU have pointed to the potential of sanctions to prevent violence before it has escalated.
Material incentives in favor of peace are important, but not sufficient, to make peace. Zartman also points to the need for the conflict parties to perceive negotiations as a feasible way out of a stalemate in which they find themselves. Parties need to build trust in the process, in each other, and in the mediator who is leading the process. According to Laurie Nathan, “If this does not happen, the parties will not embrace the mutual accommodation and compromises that are prerequisites for a negotiated settlement and they will not credibly commit to implement agreements they sign.” Indeed, as Kyle Beardsley has indicated, mediation with leverage creates strong short-term incentives, encouraging parties to sign a peace agreement, but if the incentives disappear, agreements reached through leverage often collapse. This implies that sanctions used as part of a coercive strategy, mostly relying on leverage, are potentially problematic, as this diminishes the parties’ ownership of a settlement. Likewise, sanctions potentially complicate the activities of mediators operating under the auspices of the UN, or with strong UN support, particularly if UN sanctions are broadly perceived as punitive measures adversely affecting a largely innocent civilian population.
A third condition for effective mediation is that the main parties to a conflict are included in peace negotiations. Some authors have argued that applying sanctions on conflict parties complicates inclusive mediation. They hold that sanctions stigmatize the groups against which they are applied, which makes it more difficult for international actors to engage politically with these groups by including them in peace negotiations. Generally speaking, excluding conflict parties for reasons of expediency or because of political pressure is dangerous, as it pits these parties against the mediation process. In the worst case, this may precipitate the outbreak of armed conflict, as the excluded actors push back against their marginalization. This poses a dilemma, however, because as Stephan Stedman argues, if an actor is intent on “spoiling” a process, mediators have to devise strategies to deal with such an actor. Sanctions may offer a useful instrument in this regard.
The UN Sanctions and Mediation Project
Against this background, the United Nations University, the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and swisspeace, began a research project entitled, “UN Sanctions and Mediation: Establishing Evidence to Inform Practice.” This project had two main objectives. First, to create a better understanding of the interlinkages between UN sanctions and UN-supported mediation efforts. And, second, to bring the two expert communities together to interrogate jointly when and how these tools should be deployed and how coordination could be improved. Throughout the project, the team’s guiding research questions included:
- How are UN-supported mediation and UN sanctions interlinked? How do they affect each other?
- How can UN sanctions and mediation complement each other in the pursuit of larger international peace and security goals?
The project constituted a first step in a long overdue effort to establish evidence to inform practice in the application of UN sanctions and mediation.
The project focused on cases with UN sanctions, despite the presence of unilateral and regional sanctions in many instances. In addition, the project concentrated on UN-supported mediation processes, although parallel mediation efforts were present in some of the cases studied. Case researchers were encouraged to isolate, to the extent possible, the impact of UN actions, decisions, and tools in each case so that the recommendations stemming from their findings would apply primarily to a UN audience.
Research Methodology
The sanctions and mediation literature provided a number of insights that informed the project’s core research questions. However, as described in the preceding section, there was no overarching theoretical framework explaining the interactions between sanctions and mediation on which to draw. Therefore, the SMP was organized as a theory-building project and its main approach was as a result, inductive, rather than deductive.
Given the exploratory nature of the research, the limited availability of quantifiable data, and the complexity of the subject of inquiry, a qualitative methodology based on comparative case studies was adopted. This choice was corroborated by the need for analytical depth to explore the research questions. A small number of cases allowed for a detailed examination of each conflict context, to generate hypotheses and develop general explanations regarding a larger set of cases.
Unit of Analysis, Scope Conditions, and Case Selection
The SMP identified “distinguishable episodes within a conflict situation” (DECS) as its core unit of analysis within different country cases. DECS were operationally defined by significant changes in conflict dynamics, changes in the principal conflict parties, different articulations of threats to international peace and security by the Security Council, or changes in the main mediator. DECS could include multiple rounds of negotiations, different agreements, and successive sanctions episodes. Accordingly, within one country context there often are multiple DECS.
The universe of cases is all DECS dealt with by the UN Security Council. However, to narrow the scope and increase the potential of the selected cases to generate relevant insights, temporal and substantive scope limitations were adopted.
The SMP considered cases of conflict situations that occurred only after 1990. This is because the practices of UN sanctions and international mediation changed significantly after the end of the Cold War. In addition, the SMP examined only DECS that had already been concluded, rather than considering open-ended or ongoing conflict situations.
The SMP considered cases only where UN sanctions regimes were present, omitting situations subject to unilateral or regional measures alone. However, researchers were asked to look at bilateral or regional sanctions regimes coexisting with UN sanctions due to the interactive effects of different sanctions regimes and because at the time of the project, there were few cases where UN sanctions were uniquely applied.
The SMP considered cases of DECS only that featured processes of international peace mediation. In addition, since one of the objectives of the project was to generate insights about UN mediation practice, the SMP considered mediation processes only in which the UN was in the lead or had a significant role supporting regional organizations or states in their mediation efforts.
To reflect outcome diversity and a balance between a priori positive and negative cases, the DECS chosen for detailed analysis included cases that were generally considered to be a “success,” cases considered to be “failures,” and cases where the outcome of the interaction was unknown. DECS from different continents and regional contexts were selected, and the cases reflect a variety of conflict situations, including international intervention aimed to prevent crisis escalation, manage or resolve armed conflicts, respond to unconstitutional changes of government, or protect civilians in armed conflicts. The full list of selected DECS is provided in Table 1 below.
General Research Approach
Analyzing the effects of UN sanctions on mediation implies a causal analysis. However, given the small number of cases, the SMP focused on causal dynamics within, rather than across cases. To understand how sanctions influence mediation, the research teams needed to reconstruct parallel sequences of events. This entailed understanding how sanctions were designed, applied, and communicated to the parties; how this influenced the parties’ assessment of costs and benefits of continuing war versus making peace; how this assessment was translated into a change of behavior at the peace negotiations; and whether this change of behavior made a successful outcome of mediation more or less likely. The case research also entailed an analysis of decisionmaking processes in UN bodies. This approach required the researchers to operate as detectives, reconstructing two parallel sequences of events at different levels of analysis and making inferences about potential linkages between them. The method of “process tracing” best captures the approach used. To facilitate this parallel approach, the individual country research teams were composed of two researchers–one an expert on sanctions, the second an expert on mediation, and at least one of the two an expert on the country or region in question. This hybrid team approach proved essential for successfully completing the parallel investigations and eventually synthesizing the joint analysis.
The research conducted for the eleven DECS relied on a range of data sources. Primary sources in the form of interviews with key decisionmakers were particularly useful. In addition, researchers drew on official documents related to sanctions regimes and mediation processes such as Security Council resolutions, internal documents, and personal notes of decisionmakers. Secondary sources, such as news agency reports and newspaper articles, were also valuable for reconstructing the sequence of events. To cross-check the initial analysis, cases were shared with internal UN officials and external subject and country experts to provide an expert review.
Findings about the Interrelationships between UN Sanctions and Mediation
There is evidence that UN sanctions can complicate and complement UN mediation efforts. Drawing on the results of the case research, the following sections provide examples to illustrate both dynamics.
UN Sanctions Can Complicate Mediation Efforts
UN sanctions have complicated mediation processes when the UN has been in the lead or provided significant support. Five problematic effects stand out.
Foster Exclusion
UN sanctions do not forbid targeted individuals and entities from participating in political dialogue per se, but in practice there are cases where they have had that effect. This is because of the stigmatizing effect of sanctions, in particular when applied against an entire group and as part of a counterterrorism agenda. This makes it politically difficult for mediators to engage with members of that group, including with moderate factions who might be willing to reach a negotiated settlement, leading to their de facto exclusion. Sanctions designations may also imply that international actors favor punitive strategies to deal with sanctioned groups, such as military intervention or criminal prosecutions, rather than seeking political accommodation through mediation.
In Somalia, sanctions on al-Shabaab contributed to excluding the group from the larger peace process, despite the fact that it controlled large sections of territory in the country. The sanctions on al-Shabaab also made it difficult for more moderate factions, particularly some Islamic leaders, to be included in negotiations. This frustrated Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, who served as the special representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Somalia from 2007 to (2010). He advocated for the inclusion of listed individuals into the political process, such as Sheik Dahir Aweys, but the Permanent Five (P5) rebuffed him. This appears to have pushed sanctioned individuals, including Aweys, into the camp of al-Shabaab. A similar dynamic of exclusion, fostered by UN sanctions, occurred in Yemen. The sanctions designations in November 2014 effectively excluded the Houthis from a mediated settlement of the conflict, again despite the fact that this group controlled large sections of territory. In Afghanistan, UN sanctions on the Taliban had a similar effect.
Beyond stigma, UN sanctions can also practically exclude parties from peace talks either through the application of a travel ban or an asset freeze. As many peace processes occur outside the country in conflict, participants in talks need to travel and sometimes pay for international travel costs to attend. However, the cumbersome procedures for obtaining exemptions often prove impossible to navigate. For example, in December 2012, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) planned to organize a Track II conference on reconciliation in Turkmenistan involving listed individuals. However, obtaining travel ban exemptions for these individuals would have required UNAMA to request the Afghan government to petition the sanctions committee for waivers, and for the relevant UN sanctions committee (composed of representatives of the fifteen members of the Security Council) to approve the waivers by consensus. UNAM As assessment was that this would take several months, which was not deemed compatible with the complex planning requirements for the conference. There was also a concern that the exemptions procedure would have compromised the confidentiality needed to begin the talks.
Although the nature of exclusion is different in each of the three examples–Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan–they all entail the presence of groups using terrorism (designated as such). Indeed, the presence of a counterterrorism objective in the Security Council resolution establishing sanctions often tends to prevail over broader goals of conflict resolution, leading to a narrowing of the space for engagement with key stakeholders in a peace process.
Embolden Nonsanctioned Parties
When UN sanctions target only one side of a conflict, the nonsanctioned parties may feel emboldened. The nonsanctioned party may conclude that international actors are on their side and that sanctions will eventually weaken their opponent. This may lead them to avoid serious engagement in peace talks, thinking that time is on their side. It may also lead the nonsanctioned party to propose ambitious and unsustainable arrangements, or seek military victory instead of a negotiated settlement.
In Libya, the initial Security Council Resolutions (1970 and 1973) targeted only the Qadhafi family and close associates of the regime. While this made sense given the initial civilian protection purpose of the sanctions regime, it emboldened the opposition and reduced incentives for a negotiated settlement with the government, nipping in the bud incipient mediation attempts by the African Union and the UN in March 2011. Similarly, in Yemen, the explicit threats of sanctions on Saleh and those threatening “the peace, security or stability of Yemen” emboldened President Abdrabbuh Mansu Hadi to propose a six-part federal system in February 2014, even though it was unlikely that the other parties would accept this plan.
Close Mediation Space
Applying sanctions before the onset of mediation efforts, using military force to support the implementation of sanctions (particularly when the threatened or implied goal is to eliminate a key actor), closes the space for mediation. In this scenario, there is no space for political accommodation, which renders mediation meaningless.
Libya is again a case in point. The application of sanctions against the Qadhafi regime in Security Council Resolution 1970 of 26 February 2011, which preceded the appointment of a UN special envoy (Abdelelah Al-Khatib) on 7 March, signaled there was little room for a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The Security Council resolution also undermined diplomatic efforts led by the African Union, which could have developed into a mediation process. Later, the enforcement of UN sanctions through the authorization of the use of force, and the subsequent decision by three permanent members of the Security Council to oust the Qadhafi government, definitively closed mediation space. A similar episode occurred in Afghanistan. Security Council Resolution 1333 of December 2000 grouped together the Taliban and al-Qaida and made clear that a counterterrorism agenda prevailed over efforts to involve the Taliban in peace negotiations. This effectively ended the nascent good offices of the UN mediator, Francesc Vendrell, as the Taliban rescinded their agreement to enter a political dialogue without preconditions under UN auspices.
Send Conflicting Signals and Undercut Mediator Impartiality
When sanctions are applied to achieve goals that are different from the purposes of mediation efforts, incongruent and potentially competing objectives can contradict one another. By participating in a mediation process, parties expect to be rewarded if they make peace, whereas parties commonly perceive sanctions as punishments. Therefore, when sanctions coincide with progress in peace talks, parties can be left confused and their trust in the mediator can be broken. In the worst case, this may lead to the collapse of a process or an agreement.
This is what happened in Yemen. Special Adviser Jamal Benomar facilitated an agreement in November 2014 in which the Houthis agreed with the Hadi government on the formation of a new technocratic government. The very same day, the Security Council imposed sanctions on two Houthi commanders, leading the Houthis to withdraw from the agreement and develop a more hostile attitude toward the UN mediator. In Libya, Special Envoy al-Khatib was never credible as an impartial mediator because the UN Security Council had imposed sanctions against the Qadhafi regime even before al-Khatib’s appointment. Likewise, in Afghanistan, the Taliban lost their trust in the UN as an honest broker, as the goals of modifying regime behavior, conflict resolution, counterterrorism, and eventually regime change were all comingled with the UN sanctions regime.
Lead to Unstainable Agreements
The threat of sanctions can be used to build leverage over parties and incentivize them to engage in peace talks or sign an agreement, as described below in the next section. However, if genuine consent or a desire to stop fighting are absent, the effect is unlikely to last, especially when international pressure decreases over time. In these cases, mediators’ reliance on leverage by using sanctions threats can backfire, as it undermines the parties’ ownership of the process and may force an agreement that cannot be sustained.
The best illustration of this phenomenon occurred in the case of South Sudan. In August 2015, strong diplomatic pressure from countries in the region, along with threats of an arms embargo and sanctions against senior leaders, including President Salva Kiir contributed to his decision to sign an agreement mediated by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). However, immediately after signing, Kiir issued reservations about key provisions of the agreement and subsequently failed to implement them. This illustrates that the South Sudanese government lacked ownership of the agreement. It signed the agreement to alleviate pressure, rather than out of a genuine willingness to make peace or the conviction that the agreement satisfied its interests.
It is difficult to generalize about the conditions under which sanctions are likely to complicate mediation efforts from the cases described above. Each case is sui generis and the sample is small. The characteristics of the conflicts are broadly similar or equally distributed in terms of numbers of parties or degrees of fragmentation among conflict parties, and an approximately equal number of them involve a counterterrorism dimension. The UN is in the mediation lead in most of the cases, and the sanctions are fairly targeted (with some sectoral measures). The unity of purpose among UN Security Council members varies, but it is significant to note that the coherence of the objectives of UN intervention is relatively low when compared to the other cases examined by the SMP.
UN Sanctions Can Complement Mediation Efforts
While sanctions can complicate mediation, this is only half the story. UN sanctions have complemented mediation processes when the UN was in the lead or provided significant support to mediation. Six complementary possibilities stand out.
Deter Spoiling Behavior
Warning parties that nonparticipation in peace talks will lead to the imposition of UN sanctions raises the costs of choosing to stay away from the negotiation table and of encouraging others to do so. This can incentivize a change of behavior in the short term, deter spoiling action, and lead to participation in peace talks. The success of this strategy depends, in large part, on the credibility of the threat conveyed, the mediator’s perceived proximity to the Security Council, the Council’s unity of approach to the situation in question, and whether previous threats had been issued and, eventually followed by actual listings or enhanced enforcement of existing measures.
UN special representative to Libya, Bernardino Leon, successfully used warnings of pending sanctions in June 2015, coupled with diplomatic efforts, to discourage a prominent Misrati politician from obstructing participation in UN-led talks. This warning was made all the more credible when the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain issued public threats of pending sanctions on this same politician. In this case, the politician, Abdulrahman Swehli, had been vocally criticizing the UN-brokered peace talks and blocking others from continuing their participation in the talks. The warnings of pending travel bans and asset freezes prompted Swehli’s community and eventually his family, who feared that these measures would harm the reputation of his relations and associates, to persuade Swehli to desist. Swehli continued his participation in the UN-brokered talks, ceased his public criticism of the process, and the individual Member States refrained from applying the threatened measures.
Warnings, in this case, may have been effective because some mediation goals, such as bringing parties to the table, are easier to achieve than others such as securing a comprehensive agreement, as in the case of South Sudan described above.
Break a Stalemate
Once parties are already at the table, the threat of sanctions can help break a stalemate, ripening a conflict for a mediated outcome. In other words, warning parties that failure to reach an agreement will lead to the imposition of UN sanctions raises the costs of choosing the battlefield over talks. That said, this form of leverage must be used sparingly, and the pressure must be sustained as otherwise its application, as described in Subsection 4.1, can back-fire.
Yemen presents an illustrative example. In the face of growing unrest and internal divisions in 2011, former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh refused to settle on an agreement proposed by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to cement a transfer of power. As the standoff between the parties continued, the fighting escalated. After about a six-month standoff, the special advisor to the UN Secretary-General, Jamal Benomar, who was known to be quite influential in the Security Council and close to the pen holder for the Yemen file, the United Kingdom, conveyed to then president Saleh that there was a high likelihood the Council would vote in favor of a draft resolution putting his sizable financial assets under sanctions. According to Saleh’s closest advisers, Benomar’s warning provided the necessary final push to convince Saleh to sign the GCC agreement, given the importance Saleh attached to his personal wealth and the credibility of the threat conveyed.
South Sudan presents a more controversial example, where sanctions were implicitly threatened on South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir, prior to his decision to sign the peace agreement of August 2015. In March 2015, the Council authorized the application of measures on individuals obstructing the peace process or conducting acts of violence, and the Council issued its first individual designations–an equal number on both sides of the conflict–in July. The timing suggests that a calibrated ratcheting up of the sanctions threat through first issuing a warning and then applying individual sanctions designations was an element in persuading both Kiir and Riek Machar to sign the agreement. Machar signed first, as eventually did Kiir in late August, but Kiir’s public reservations and his subsequent failure to implement its provisions can be explained either by the fact that the conflict was not sufficiently near “ripeness,” or that he was correct in calling the sanctions threat as a bluff. No subsequent sanctions were applied on Kiir following his refusal to implement the full terms of the agreement.
Incentivize Cooperation with Goals of a Peace Process
A temporary exemption from an asset freeze, a travel ban exemption on medical grounds, or a promise to advocate for delisting can help build confidence between the parties and between the parties and the mediator. A promise to ease measures can convince otherwise reluctant parties to participate in talks, sign agreements, and abide by them. The desire of an individual to regain a status as a legitimate or (inter)nationally recognized member of a community is an important precondition.
UN and US efforts to bring members of both the Taliban and affiliated individuals in Afghanistan “back in from the cold” provides an exemplary illustration. In the case of the Afghan warlord and former prime minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the government of Afghanistan offered to advocate on his behalf for the lifting of sanctions, if he reconciled with them, according to the terms set out by the government for normalization of relations. Hekmatyar, at the time, was under the UN asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo, and living in exile. Seeking a path toward sanctions relief, domestic political rehabilitation, and an end to international (and national) isolation, Hekmatyar signed an agreement with the Ghani government in September 2016 and returned to Kabul as a “reconciled” individual. UN sanctions against Hekmatyar were subsequently lifted in February 2017.
Constrain Agreement Disruption
UN sanctions, especially sectoral measures, can be used to alter the cost-benefit calculations of parties by constraining an actors’ ability to disrupt an existing agreement through blocking their access to much-needed sources of financing, weapons, or goods. This strategy was demonstrated in the case of sanctions applied in Sierra Leone, explored further in this issue. The diamonds export and arms import embargos constrained the ability of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to sabotage the Lome Agreement by limiting the armed group’s means of paying for weapons and their options for procuring them. In this case, the sanctions related to Sierra Leone were enhanced by secondary country sanctions placed on neighboring Liberia–the source of most of the RUF’s weapons and the primary market for its rough diamond exports. Given these constraints, the RUF decided it was untenable to remain outside the peace process. Its leaders recommitted to the Lome Agreement, enabling an end to the conflict soon thereafter.
Serve as a Confidence-Building Measure and Ensure Broad Participation in Talks
When used effectively, sanctions exemptions can serve as a confidencebuilding measure on the path to an eventual negotiated settlement. For example, including travel ban exemptions for peace talks in sanctions regimes’ design can help ensure all relevant stakeholders are either able or willing to participate in talks. Given that the vast majority of mediated talks occur outside the region of a conflict, such mundane but essential design elements can make a substantial difference to whether talks can take place at all, who attends, and whether sanctions provisions are observed.
In Sierra Leone, a travel exemption enabled RUF leader Foday Sankoh to attend peace talks in Togo, while in Afghanistan travel ban exemptions allowed Taliban representatives to attend negotiations in Qatar. To be useful to the mediation process, the mediator has to understand how travel ban exemptions work and have access to a party sympathetic to a mediated outcome and able and willing to apply for the exemptions on the mediator’s behalf.
While exemptions “for the peaceful resolution of a conflict” are standard in most UN Security Council resolutions applying sanctions, few mediators are aware of their existence or of how to employ them.
Facilitate the Onset of Talks
While infrequent, the splitting of an existing sanctions regime, to disentangle counterterrorist objectives and conflict resolution goals, can facilitate the use of delisting as an incentive to participate in talks. When counterterrorism objectives in a sanctions regime prevail over conflict resolution, as was the case in Afghanistan in the early 2000s, the potential of deploying sanctions as incentives to participate in talks suffers. Conversely, extracting the counterterrorism focus and designations from a mixed-purpose regime and maintaining only a conflict resolution focus, as was done in the case of the 1267 Taliban/Al Qaida regime in 2011, can serve to reestablish the sanctions regime as a potential resource, rather than a liability for the mediator. Following this logic, similar decoupling actions could be considered for the Yemen, Somalia, and Mali sanctions regimes, all of which currently have mixed purposes and, as a result, are more challenging for a mediator looking to deploy sanctions to complement the ongoing peace processes.
It is again difficult to generalize about the conditions under which sanctions are likely to complement mediation efforts from the cases described above. Three factors stand out, however. Cases where the UN applies relatively more discriminating individual measures tend to be more common in instances of complementarity, suggesting that more sweeping sanctions measures are more likely to complicate mediation efforts. The unity of purpose among UN Security Council members is relatively high in cases of complementarity, and even more striking, the coherence among the objectives of UN intervention is quite high when compared to the other cases examined by the SMP.
Conclusion
On balance, while there are instances in which sanctions can complicate and even contradict mediation efforts, there are also instances in which they can complement the activities of mediators negotiating in the midst of complex conflicts. This suggests policy recommendations for facilitating complementarity and some ideas about promising avenues for future research.
In general terms, as with any large bureaucratic organization, there are challenges to harmonizing the efforts of different administrative units within the UN Secretariat. Working as “one UN” is often more aspirational than realizable, and the Security Council complicates the task when the mandates given to mediators differ from those in sanctions resolutions. There are also some structural challenges that may be even more difficult to overcome. Mediation and sanctions operate with different time horizons. A mediator is actively engaged with parties to the conflict and may need to make credible offers or proposals on the spot, taking immediate advantage of potential openings among the parties. The Security Council sanctions architecture ordinarily takes weeks to process exemptions requests and may jeopardize the confidentiality required for mediation efforts. Achieving Security Council coherence, overcoming differences in time horizons, and maintaining confidentiality are structural factors that inherently complicate complementarity. The support of regional organizations can also play an important role in facilitating complementarity, as the case of Sierra Leone suggests, just as the opposition of regional actors can complicate matters, as in South Sudan and Yemen.
The research results suggest some specific policy recommendations for different institutional actors. The UN Security Council should strive for greater consistency in the mandates it provides to mediators and in its sanctions resolutions. Those drafting resolutions should take mediation dynamics into account when designing, applying, and adapting sanctions regimes. The Council should also undertake strategic communication with concerned actors, who often have no clear understanding of the demands being placed on them. Engagement with neighboring states, regional powers, and regional organizations is also imperative for effective conflict intervention, as each of the cases in this special section illustrate. UN Sanctions Committees should ensure that travel ban exemptions and partial assets freeze exemptions are processed confidentially and expeditiously so sanctioned individuals can attend peace talks. UN envoys and senior mediators should convey political discussions about UN sanctions to the parties, but generally refrain from making public calls for UN sanctions. It is important that envoys understand how UN sanctions work, through access to specialized trainings on UN sanctions. For its part, the UN Secretariat should work with the Security Council to devise a coherent political strategy for countries experiencing armed conflict, as well as foster interaction between sanctions and mediation expert communities.
There are a number of fruitful avenues for future research on the relationship between sanctions and mediation. Many of the insights identified above could be extended to sanctions and negotiations since sanctions relief can also be employed to break deadlocks between negotiating conflict parties without a mediator. Perceptions of sanctions from the vantage point of those targeted by the measures need to be undertaken to understand how sanctions threats actually work. This is a blind spot in the wider sanctions literature, but particularly relevant in this domain, as seen by the number of assertions made about individual behavior (coming to the table, agreeing to a negotiated settlement, and adhering to agreements). The interactive effects of not just sanctions and mediation, but also of peace operations need further systematic study. At present, the research communities in these three issue domains generally replicate the silos that exist among different parts of the UN Secretariat. It would be fruitful to explore the different mandates and cumulative effects of sanctions, mediation, and peace operations on different phases of conflict intervention and resolution. Finally, the timing of sanctions and mediation efforts can have impacts on the outcomes of their interaction. Sequencing is essential, as shown in the Libya case in 2011, where sanctions preceded and undercut mediation efforts. Similarly, breaking stalemates after parties are seated at the table, as in the case of Yemen, also suggests that timing may be one of the factors conducive to complementarity. There is a rich agenda here, one with conceptual and theoretical promise, not to mention its enormous policy potential.