THE CHALLENGE OF THE “ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE” AND THE “SOVEREIGNTY OF STATES”: A REVIEW OF THE PROBLEM OF LEGITIMACY OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS IN THE REALITY OF THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ORDER

Abstract

One of the problems faced by the international community is to find a basis for regulating economic relations between the states. While the third world states still emphasize their economic sovereignty to encounter and maintain their positions against the North States, the analysis of the international legal realities shows that merely relying on the “economic independence” and “permanent sovereignty over natural resources” cannot be a practical way to achieve the ideals of states known as the “South.” Like the Sword of Damocles, sovereignty can pave the way for maintaining the “status quo” or the domination of the premier economic powers in the international equation. Merely relying on international law as a branch based on the states’ sovereignty will be actually misleading to change the status quo. By a realistic analysis of the less positive role of sovereignty in the procedure of regulating the relations between the North and the South, this study seeks to focus on the fact that going out of the impasse of unjust economic relations between the North and the South will be possible only by creating a gap in the traditional concept of economic sovereignty in a sense that has been formed by the third world states in the 60s and 70s of the past century.