It comes as no surprise that in all corners of the world there has been wide-spread condemnation on Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe and his ruling party, ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front). In the weeks surrounding the recent elections the news has been flooded with reports of human rights abuses and political violence directed at supporters of the main opposition party MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) and its presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai. International observers have accused the ruling forces of vote-rigging and declared the absence of free and fair elections.
Despite the strong words echoed by politicians and activists alike, is not always enough to simply condemn and criticise. So what can the international community do? The options range from applying diplomatic pressure to outright humanitarian intervention in times of urgent crises. Only last week, the United Nations Security Council debated the possibility of imposing sanctions on the Harare regime, intermediate measures which included a travel ban on Mugabe’s closest allies and an arms embargo. But as is often the case, the members of the Security Council were split on the issue. South Africa, for instance, opposed the draft resolution, preferring a power-sharing deal between the ZANU-PF and the MDC. The resolution was eventually buried with the resistance, and veto powers, of China and Russia.
I am interested to find out more about these so-called ‘smart’ or ‘targeted’ sanctions, which are the equivalent of precision bombing in international diplomacy. As opposed to the ‘old-fashioned’ general sanctions the idea is to be able to punish the individuals in power rather than the population as a whole. I search the IBSS database with the phrase ‘targeted sanctions’ and find an interesting-sounding book: International Sanctions: Between Words and Wars in the Global Age (Peter Wallenstein & Carina Staibano, 2005) for which there are several chapter records available too. For example, judging by Erica Cosgrove’s piece ‘Examining Targeted Sanctions: Are Travel Bans Effective? I get an even better idea for the relevance of the book. There is also another chapter in the same book by David Cortright, Linda Gerber and George A. Lopez (‘Implementing Targeted Sanctions: The Role of International Agencies and Regional Organizations’) that would certainly be useful.
To complement the information I have gathered so far, I also conduct a search with ‘smart sanctions’ and of the eleven results produced I find an article by Ella Shagabutdinova and Jeffrey Berejikian (2007) particularly interesting. The piece, titled ‘Deploying Sanctions While Protecting Human Rights: Are Humanitarian ‘Smart’ Sanctions Effective?’, proves by means of statistical analysis that ‘smart’ sanctions are indeed more effective than traditional sanctions in combining the humanitarian element with efficient economic and political restrictions. It is unclear whether the international community will further proceed down the avenue of imposing sanctions (‘smart’ or not) or whether there will be an alternative development in the political situation in Zimbabwe.
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