Decolonizing Sanctions: The Emancipatory Potential of Sanctions in “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) Campaigns

This Article locates an analysis of economic sanctions in anticolonial lawmaking’s development of a right of self-determination within its two distinct aspects: an “independence” aspect, seeking freedom from colonial domination in all its manifestations, and a “non-domination” aspect, seeking to safeguard this independence from non-colonial forms of imperial control. While the non-domination aspect prohibits the deployment of sanctions by former colonizing powers and their settler states against formerly colonized states, the independence aspect of self-determination requires the imposition of sanctions to dismantle colonial structures in all its varying forms. Colonial structures seek to extract wealth—often in the form of land—by dispossessing a people of the land to which they belong. International trade and investment play a significant role in facilitating that extraction of wealth. Thus, in order to avoid being complicit in such relations, third-party states must refrain from engaging in trade and investment specific to those colonial relations. It is this requirement of unilateral economic sanctions that forms the legal basis of BDS campaigns.