ABSTRACT
Article 41 of the United Nations (UN) Charter empowers the UN Security Council (UNSC or Council) to adopt measures not involving the use of force in order to maintain or restore international peace and security. Until the 1990s, the UNSC used these measures, commonly known as sanctions, to comprehensively target States threatening or breaching the peace. Notwithstanding the despicable human rights record of smart sanctions, practice shows that since at least 2012 an idea has been floated to formalise a relationship between the International Criminal Court (ICC) and UNSC Sanctions Committees (SCs) – i.e. the UNSC sub-organs managing sanctions. The use of UN smart sanctions to tackle the ICC arrest dilemma will associate the Court with a tool that unequivocally violates the rights of targets. Hence, as the law stands today, the infliction of smart sanctions to induce surrender must be resisted, unless – at a minimum – appropriate procedures to guarantee ICC defendants’ human rights are put in place.
