UN SanctionsApp

SanctionsApp is an analytical tool that can be used in real time by both scholars and practitioners who have an interest in examining, or who are working on designing and implementing UN targeted sanctions.

SanctionsApp is managed and updated at the Programme for the Study of International Governance at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland. It is based on research originally undertaken by the Targeted Sanctions Consortium (TSC), a group of more than fifty scholars and policy practitioners worldwide with interest in and specialized knowledge of UN targeted sanctions. The App provides access to text from hundreds of UN Security Council resolutions and has incorporated interactive filtering features based on the Graduate Institutes ongoing update of the TSCs original quantitative and qualitative databases.

The TSC project was the first comprehensive, systematic, and comparative assessment of the impacts and effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions regimes and included assessments of all UN targeted sanctions regimes from 1991 to 2014. The TSC conceptual innovations include (1) a focus on case episodes within broader country cases that allows detailed analysis of changes in types and purposes of targeted sanctions over time; and (2) an analysis of effectiveness in terms of the different purposes of targeted sanctions – to coerce, constrain, or signal targets. For more information see the TSC website (link at the end of this text).

There are five core functions on SanctionsApp:

(1) Sanctions Menu:
Provides sample text for different types of UN targeted sanctions, drawing on language used previously by the Security Council. In this function of the app, different types of targeted sanctions are presented on a scale ranging from most to least targeted.

(2) Cases & Episodes:
Presents a detailed qualitative overview and analysis of 68 different episodes within all 24 UN targeted sanctions regimes since 1991, including assessments of their effectiveness and links to relevant UN resolutions.

(3) Analogy Finder:
Identifies the most appropriate analogies to contemporary conflict situations, enabling them to enter key characteristics of the threat (such as the type of conflict), the purposes of the targeted sanctions (whether to coerce, constrain, and/or signal), and examples of effective sanctions regimes in the past.

(4) Sanctions Checklist:
Presents a quick overview of factors that should be considered when designing targeted sanctions.

(5) Sanctions Facts:
Presents basic facts about UN targeted sanctions.

SanctionsApp was developed at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, with the support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Version 1.0 of SanctionsApp was produced by the TSCs co-directors, Thomas Biersteker and Sue Eckert, and by Marcos Tourinho and Zuzana Hudáková, with extensive assistance from Cecilia Cannon. The App was designed and programmed by Colaco SA. Neither the Graduate Institute, the Government of Switzerland, nor the App designer bear any responsibility for the assessments of effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions contained in the App, or other App content, which are the sole responsibility and intellectual property of the content developers.

SanctionsApp is updated on a regular basis, and the assessments of effectiveness in Version 2.0 date from January 2014. The database is from June 2014. For comments or questions, please contact [email protected].

To cite SanctionsApp, please use the following format: Biersteker, Thomas, Zuzana Hudakova, and Marcos Tourinho, SanctionsApp, Computer software, mobile app, June 2014.