Iryna Bogdanova

Universität Bern | UniBe · World Trade Institute

The great-power rivalry between the United States and China, the European Union’s policy of technological sovereignty, as well as the nature and economic implications of the fifth-generation wireless (5G) set the context for the politicization of said technology. This politicization is reflected in the growing resistance to the participation of the...

The brutal war waged by Russia against Ukraine is taking place on many fronts, including the economic one. Since the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, economic sanctions imposed on Russia have been significantly tightened in an effort to stall the war. Technology sanctions—which can be defined as prohibitions on the supply of dual-use...

Are unilateral economic sanctions legal under public international law? How do they relate to the existing international legal principles and norms? Can unilateral economic sanctions imposed to redress grave human rights violations be subjected to the same legal contestations as other unilateral sanctions? What potential contribution can the recent...

Analysis of sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation and Russian responses

The current legal vacuum regarding binding international norms regulating malicious conduct in cyberspace has paved the way for the emergence of a unilateral tool: cyber sanctions. They have already been introduced by the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding their obvious importance, their interrelations with i...

To offset the devastating effects of the trade war waged by the Russian Federation, Ukraine has undertaken laudable efforts since 2014 to negotiate new trade agreements with other states. Against this background, the negotiations of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement were finalized and the agreement came into force on 1 August 2017. This artic...

Book Review. Sanctions with Chinese Characteristics: Rhetoric and Restraint in China’s Diplomacy by Angela Poh, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2021, 372 pp., €109 (hardback), ISBN 978-9-463-72235-3

In this chapter, it is argued that the deficiencies of the international human rights regime pose a difficult dilemma for individual states – when and how to respond to egregious human rights violations abroad. Being constrained by a few possible alternatives, individual states or groups of states increasingly rely upon coercive economic measures (...

Individual states increasingly rely upon targeted economic sanctions to achieve their foreign policy goals. The legality of such unilateral sanctions remains debatable in public international law. However, their proliferation and possible negative repercussions encourage targeted states to question their legality before international tribunals, inc...

The Common Concern of Humankind today is central to efforts to bring about enhanced international cooperation in fields including, but not limited to, climate change. This book explores the expression’s potential as a future legal principle. It sets out the origins of Common Concern, its differences to other common interest legal principles, and ex...

Trade Relations Between Ukraine and Russia Amidst the War

This post is an attempt to briefly reflect upon the WTO panel’s ruling in Russia - Traffic in Transit (DS 512) on the contentious issue of the national security exception. I begin by outlining the historical context of the recent transit dispute. The post then summarizes the legal claims brought by Ukraine and the justifications raised by the Russi...

Amidst the severe crisis the WTO’s crown jewel is facing these days, the WTO tribunals are confronted with another perplexed matter – adjudication of the security exception. In a number of the ongoing disputes the parties invoked national security to justify their trade-restrictive measures. The interpretation of the security exception raises a num...

At the turn of the year, Venezuela initiated a WTO dispute with the United States. In a nutshell, Venezuela questions WTO-consistency of a number of coercive trade-restrictive measures (economic sanctions) imposed by the United States. Some of those restrictions were allegedly imposed on the human rights grounds.