On Friday 21 June, Professor Thomas Biersteker and the Targeted Sanctions Consortium (TSC) presented the “SanctionsApp” at the Swiss Mission in New York City. The application for mobile phones and tablets (iPhone, Android) and regular internet browsers, is based on research covering all 22 United Nations sanctions regimes over the last 20+ years. It provides a host of useful information easily accessible to scholars and practitioners examining, designing or implementing targeted sanctions.

SanctionsApp contains detailed executive summaries of 65 sanction episodes and is based on extensive quantitative data. It also includes comparative information on each episode covering political will, purposes, targets, norms supported, and types of sanctions. There is also information on the relationship between UN targeted sanctions and other sanctions regimes, with other policy instruments – diplomatic negotiations, legal referrals, and both the threat and actual use of force – implementation (at both the UN and national level), and unintended consequences.

SanctionsApp was developed at the Graduate Institute with the support of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. It was produced by the TSC co-directors, Thomas Biersteker and Sue Eckert (Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University), as well as Marcos Tourinho and Zuzana Hudáková, with Cecilia Cannon, of the Institute’s Programme for the Study of International Governance.

The TSC is a group of more than fifty scholars and policy practitioners from around the world studying the impacts and effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions. The TSC is the first systematic, comprehensive, international effort to analyse and make policy recommendations for the use of UN Targeted Sanctions. Professor Thomas Biersteker is co-Director of the Consortium and Director of the Institute’s Programme for the Study of International Governance, which has contributed to the Consortium’s work.

Read more about the UN Targeted Sanctions Research Project.

SanctionsApp is available on the Apple App Store and Android Market / Play store.