The use of unilateral sanctions, the means of their enforcement and over-compliance, and the implementation of UN Security Council resolutions in the face of unilateral sanctions raise serious concerns related to international law, and in particular to international human rights and humanitarian law, as well as questions related to political and economic decision-making.
Despite the existence of multiple publications focusing on sanctions of the UN Security Council and on unilateral sanctions, the issues of over-compliance, sanctions enforcement, an assessment of the legality and impact of various types of unilateral sanctions, and access to justice and to remedies in particular appear to have been overlooked and urgently need to be addressed.
Sanctions, Business and Human Rights provides a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the current state of affairs with regards to unilateral sanctions, not only from the perspective of human rights law but also by involving other disciplines, such as political science and economics, as well as other areas of international law, including principles of international law and international trade law.
This book, edited by UN Special Rapporteur Alena F. Douhan, features 22 highly credentialled contributors from a wide range of countries around the world addressing WTO law, international economic law, human rights law, international humanitarian law, sources of international law, the law of international responsibility, international cyber law, international commercial arbitration, international private law and many other areas.
Their reports demonstrate that access to justice, access to remedies, mechanisms of accountability and redress universally recognized as the means of promotion and protection of all human rights, as well as of the rule of law in general, cannot be guaranteed in sanctions environments and sometimes cannot be applied at all. Lawyers, who traditionally play an important role in the promotion and protection of human rights, are affected by unilateral sanctions and subjected to higher risks and responsibility for circumvention or alleged circumvention of unilateral sanctions regimes.

Professor Alena F. Douhan (Belarus), Dr. hab., UN Special Rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights (2020-until now, a professor of International Law, the Director of the Peace Research Center at the Belarusian State University (Belarus), and an associated member of the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict at Ruhr University Bochum. Her teaching and research interests are in the fields of international law, sanctions and human rights law, international security law, law of international organizations.