School of Humanities & Languages
Australia's sanctions act demands reform to comply with international law: expert
Published on the 26 February 2026
Jessica Whyte and Sara Dehm's submission to the 2025 Senate enquiry into Australia’s approach to sanctions outlined deficiencies and systemic failures of the 2011 act. Photo: Adobe Stock images
Australia’s sanction act should be re-oriented to promote the fundamental principles of international law, a UNSW expert says.
Australia’s sanctions act needs urgent reform to promote the right of all peoples to self-determination, says a political philosopher from UNSW’s School of Humanities & Languages.
Sanctions are official measures that prohibit trade and economic relations with states or individuals for a range of reasons. “These can include to pressure a state to change its behaviour, enforce international norms, or isolate individuals for unlawful behaviour,” says Scientia Associate Professor Jessica Whyte.
Self-determination is a people’s ability to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
“It’s recognised as a fundamental principle of the United Nations (UN), and a fundamental prerequisite for the enjoyment of all other rights by both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,” says the expert in political economy and human rights.
“The International Court of Justice (ICJ) considers it an obligation owed to all states that ‘all states have a legal interest in protecting’, and yet this is not recognised within our current sanctions’ regime.”
A/Prof. Whyte is an Associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW. Her research integrates political philosophy, intellectual history and political economy to analyse contemporary human rights, sovereignty, humanitarianism and militarism.
Her Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship examines economic sanctions in the post-Cold War period. She’s undertaking archival research to better understand this history to “illuminate public debate about sanctions today and help inform policy responses in the present”.
Her submission to the 2025 Senate enquiry into Australia’s approach to sanctions, co-authored with Associate Professor Sara Dehm from UTS, outlined deficiencies and systemic failures of the Autonomous Sanctions Act 2011.
The Senate submission was endorsed by more than 40 Australian academics with expertise in international law, sanctions, international humanitarian law and human rights.
Australia’s human rights-related sanctions regime responds to deprivation of the right to life; torture or cruel, inhuman/degrading treatment or punishment; and slavery, servitude and forced/compulsory labour.
“[However, it] should be expanded to explicitly include violations of the right of people to self-determination; violations of the prohibition on genocide; violations of the prohibition on apartheid and racial segregation; and the prohibition on foreign illegal occupation and territorial annexation.”
It’s noteworthy these key principles of international law are not explicitly included within Australia's sanctions regime, she says.
“We also suggested a trigger mechanism where Australia's sanctions regime would directly respond to and implement authoritative decisions of international courts, particularly the International Court of Justice, concerning serious violations and abuses of fundamental human rights.
“Our concern was that sanctions were being imposed on the basis of geopolitical considerations or alliances, rather than in response to violations of international law.
“We need to reorient the act to promote the fundamental principles of and ensure compliance with international law, rather than allowing it to be an arbitrary mechanism to pursue political objectives.”
Examining the legitimacy of smart, targeted sanctions
As part of her Future Fellowship, A/Prof. Whyte’s research asks how economic sanctions came to be understood as a non-violent alternative to war.
“This is, in many ways, quite a novel framing. In the interwar period when sanctions were first used by the League of Nations, they were understood as an absolutely devastating weapon of total war,” she says.
Before the end of the Cold War in 1989, the United Nations imposed sanctions just twice: against Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and apartheid-era South Africa.
“[However, in] the aftermath of the Cold War, we saw this extraordinary proliferation of economic sanctions and, particularly unilateral sanctions – that is, sanctions imposed by a single state or a coalition of states without UN authorisation. They came to be talked about as this non-violent alternative to armed conflict,” she says.
“The idea of smart, targeted sanctions was a reaction, in many ways, to the devastation of the Iraq sanctions, and the recognition that these sanctions had had an utterly debilitating effect on Iraq’s population.”
But this attempt to deal with the humanitarian consequences further legitimised states imposing sanctions, she says. “By conceiving sanctions as humane and precise and targeted, it became more difficult to contest them.
“And these seemingly targeted sanctions continue to have devastating implications for the populations of some targeted states.
“I’m interested in understanding how this shift took place and what's at stake in it. The ongoing examination of the theoretical assumptions underlying international sanctions is essential for ensuring their legitimacy.”
Australia could play a leadership role through autonomous sanctions
While the idea of sanctions as it circulates in public debate is about enforcing international law, for example, responding to unlawful acts, Australia’s sanctions regime is inconsistent and politicised, A/Prof. Whyte says.
Australia can impose sanctions that implement decisions of the UN Security Council as well as autonomous sanctions that Australia applies unilaterally.
“Overwhelmingly, Australia's sanctions have been selectively copied from other allied nations, notably the UK, the US and, to some extent, the EU,” she says.
“The foreign minister has very broad discretionary powers – often very non-transparent and opaque powers – to impose sanctions on particular states.”
“It's very clear the United States is an absolute outlier when it comes to its sanctions practice. [For example,] the United Nations regularly passes resolutions condemning the US blockade of Cuba, which is almost universally considered to be unlawful.
In an article co-written with A/Prof. Dehm, A/Prof Whyte argues that, “instead of aligning its autonomous sanctions decision-making with so-called like-minded partners, Australia could play a leadership role and impose sanctions in line with its international legal obligations.
“Among those, as the ICJ has made very clear, is to prevent any trade and investment relationships which would have the effect of strengthening Israel's unlawful occupation of Palestinian territories.”
While it’s true sanctions are more effective when they’re imposed by multiple states, rather than just one, Australia is not restricted to following the US or the UK, A/Prof. Whyte says.
A/Prof.Dehm and A/Prof. Whyte note that the Hawke Government sanctioned apartheid-era South Africa in the mid-1980s in the absence of Security Council action and in the face of initial opposition from the UK and US.
“It’s easy to overlook the fact that the sanctions placed on South Africa were opposed by much of the same actors opposing sanctions on Israel today,” she says.
“We've seen far less of that willingness to take an independent role in defence of international law today.”
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Scientia Associate Professor Jessica Whyte
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