Unilateral human rights sanctions: enforcement, selectivity, and the limits of the Magnitsky model

This article examines the emergence and implications of unilateral human rights-based (Magnitsky-like) sanctions as a tool for enforcing human rights protections globally. Focusing on the legal frameworks and early practice of the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, it combines comparative analysis with a normative assessment under international law. The article argues that, although these regimes respond to a genuine enforcement deficit and may in some cases increase pressure on perpetrators of grave abuses, they remain structurally limited as tools of human rights enforcement. Their legal basis is contested, designation and de-listing standards are often indeterminate, implementation is selective, and their effectiveness depends on an exceptional degree of multilateral coordination. In practice, they function less as reliable instruments of behavioural change than as expressive and stigmatizing measures. They should therefore be understood as supplementary, politically contingent tools rather than substitutes for multilateral enforcement.