Targeted Sanctions: A Tool to Protect Human Rights? An Analysis of African Union, European Union, and United Nations Sanctions in Human Rights Violation Cases

The United Nations, the European Union, and the African Union have as part of their mission to promote human rights, as stated in their constituency documents. Hence, we expect that these international organizations (IO) would make use of their toolbox to defend these rights and push other countries to respect them. With the emergence of targeted sanctioning after the end of the Cold War, it is natural to assume that these IOs, in accordance with their values and goals, would use this instrument to warn and punish countries that violate human rights and encourage a change in their behavior. By comparing data on human rights violations and sanctions applied by the three IOs using statistical tests and in-depth case studies, this paper investigates whether the severity of human rights violations influenced these IOs’ sanctioning behavior between 1991 and 2011.