sanction

Economic or military measure taken by a state or number of states to enforce international law. The first use of sanctions, as a trade embargo, was the attempted economic boycott of Italy 1935–36 during the Abyssinian War by the League of Nations.

Other examples of sanctions are the economic boycott of Rhodesia, after its unilateral declaration of independence 1965, by the United Nations (UN); measures taken against South Africa on human-rights grounds by the UN and other organizations from 1986 (the majority of these were repealed 1993, the UN's 1994); the economic boycott of Iraq 1990 in protest over its invasion of Kuwait, following resolutions passed by the UN; the UN embargo in force against the military regime in Haiti 1993–94 (the Organization of American States and the USA imposed their own embargos against the regime from 1991); the international sanctions against Serbia 1992–95 in protest against its backing of the Bosnian Serbs; in 1998, sanctions resulting from the situation in the province of Kosovo; and, in 1998, sanctions against India and Pakistan after their respective nuclear tests. More recently, the UN authorized sanctions against Iran in 2006 for its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment programme which had heightened international fears about the country's nuclear weapon ambitions.