Human Security and Economic Sanctions

For the past several years, international legal scholars have referred to the concepts of the right to food and the right to health within the broad concept of the right to minimum sustenance. Many academics have concluded that one should see the right to live as a civil minimum of international society, and should examine ways in which to realize it. The concepts of the right to food and the right to health are reflections of this perspective. In my view, the right to minimum sustenance should include all of the elements of human security—including availability, accessibility, and utilization of a basic human need. The right to minimum sustenance as a basic human need is more than freedom from hunger or the right to the mere survival of the people, but a right to realize the health and security of human beings. In this article, I would like to discuss the relations between human security and economic sanctions by analyzing the humanitarian exemptions of sanctions and the right to minimum sustenance as a basic human need. In the first section, I will discuss the legitimacy of economic sanctions. In the second section, I will analyze the United Nations sanctions against Iraq and the oil for food program as the system of the humanitarian exemptions of sanctions. In the third section, I will discuss legality of economic sanctions in light of human security. In the forth section, I will analyze the relations between human security and legitimacy of economic sanctions. This analysis leads to the conclusion that it might be useful for the Security Council to make reference to the concept of human security to foster the legitimacy of sanction regimes, even though the concept of human security has not yet been regarded as legal principles.