States, as well as international organizations, have a longstanding sanctioning history. However, the recent unprecedented expansion of sanctioning practices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought to the fore (and resurrected) manifold legal and practical questions concerning the adoption of sanctions: sanctions are adopted by non-state actors, individual sanctions are increasingly litigated before the Court of Justice of the EU on account of their non-compliance with human rights standards; national authorities often struggle with the implementation of manifold sanctions regimes; states and international organizations are looking into options for improving the effectiveness of sanctions and tackling sanctions evasion; some States and the EU are developing new confiscation regimes, which include both confiscation of state-owned and private property, etc. This proliferation of sanctions regimes means that in practice, States, various international organizations and non-state actors (often simultaneously) adopt different sectoral, targeted and institutional sanctions, which brings to the fore the question of interactions between these sanctions regimes, their effectiveness and their effect on the civilian population.  On the other hand, global actors fail to adopt sanctions in relation to other situations involving serious violations of peremptory norms of international law. All these developments touch upon the fundamental issue of the legality and legitimacy of sanctions and the type of world order such practice upholds. This raises difficult questions including (but not limited to) issues concerning the notion and purpose of sanctions in international law and politics, immunities of States, extraterritoriality of sanctions, intersections with international human rights law and investment law, geoeconomic implications of sanctions and their effectiveness, global injustices, their contribution to colonial projects, etc.

 

The Ljubljana Sanctions Conference seeks to foster interdisciplinary debates and aims to bring together practitioners (both from relevant state authorities, such as Ministries of Foreign Affairs, and the private sector), experts and scholars to discuss sanctions in international and European law, politics and economics. It will highlight theoretical, normative, conceptual, and practical challenges on the topic and provide a unique opportunity for exchanging views on, evaluating and analysing lessons learned.

 

The organizers welcome abstracts from the following topics:

• The development of international sanctions practice;

• The practice of abstention to sanction and the possible double standards;

• The notion of sanctions – theoretical and practical perspectives;

• Challenges in national implementation of sanctions (including listing and de-listing procedures, compliance, sanctions evasion and procedures concerning sanctions violations);

• Sanctions and human rights in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union;

• Legal issues concerning the confiscation of state-owned property;

• Extraterritorial effects of sanctions;

• Confiscation of private property and human rights;

• Sanctions of and in the context of international organizations;

• Sanctions as geo-economical and geo-political tools;

• Intersections between sanctions and investment law;

• Sanctions and humanitarian action;

• Effectiveness of sanctions;

• Critical approaches to and double standards in sanctioning policies;

• TWAIL approaches to sanctions;

• The world-making dimensions of sanctions;

• The type of world order promoted by the practice of sanctions.