2015 Volume 2015 Issue 182 Pages 182_98-182_110
This article examines why and how the United Nations (UN) Security Council (SC) introduced due process into targeted sanctions. The focus is on the relations between different international organizations, namely “inter-organizational relations”. Particular attention is paid to the relations between European regional organizations (ROs), such as the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (CoE), and the UN. The UN SC introduced some procedures for delisting individuals or entities from the terrorists list in reaction to the political and legal resistance by the ROs against the possibility of the infringement of fundamental rights of those who are listed.
Recently, international organizations have increasingly contact with each other. This trend began to be reflected in academic literature, but studies in inter-organizational relations are still embryonic. In order to contribute to this field, this article analyzes the case study on targeted sanctions, for, inter-organizational relations between the UN and the ROs are vertical ones, both politically and legally (Section 1). Nevertheless, existing literature has largely ignored, or at least underestimated, this vertical aspect. Thus,this article elaborates and presupposes vertical relations between the UN and the ROs and counters some existing researches on inter-organizational relations. Based upon the review of existing literature, the article suggests using the concept of resistance in the analysis of targeted sanctions, and hypothesizes that the political and legal resistance by the ROs urged the SC to introduce due process (Section 2). In order to prove this, the case study on targeted sanctions focuses on: (1) how did the ROs resist the SC? (2) how did the SC identify and accept the resistance? (Section 3)
As for the first question, although the ROs have cooperated on the implementation of targeted sanctions, there are some instances of resistance against the SC. For instance, the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights criticized the problems on the protection of human rights and raised the possibility of annulling the laws implementing targeted sanctions. As well, the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE passed the resolutions on the problem. As for the second question, this article reveals that the SC became aware of the resistance through its subsidiary organs and member states. As a result, the procedures for delisting such as the “focal point” or the “Office of the Ombudsperson”were established and the wording of the resolutions was modified in favor of human rights protection.
This study implies that the ROs may influence the decision-making of the UN that is legally superior to the ROs, and contribute to correcting the global injustice although they are only “regional” organizations.
