The Sins of the Fathers: Targeted Sanctions against Family Members of Primary Targets

Targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes and travel bans, are an increasingly popular response to a wide array of wrongdoing. This article considers an especially problematic aspect of contemporary sanctions law and practice that has received little attention so far, namely the imposition of sanctions on the family members of the primary target. In charting out a coherent and principled approach to such sanctions, the article makes three distinct contributions. First, it offers a comprehensive survey of law, policy and practice related to family-member sanctions across the US, UK, EU and Australia. Secondly, it identifies the limits that international human rights law places on such sanctions, which effectively preclude automatic family-member sanctions. Thirdly and finally, it proposes a ‘profit-based’ sanctions model as an alternative to ‘activity-based’ and ‘status-based’ sanctions, as well as outlining its implications for the design of family-member sanctions.