Abstract
This paper considers international sanctions from the perspective of international law. It seeks to identify some of the ambiguities surrounding the notion of sanctions and, at the same time, to explain what sanctions may include and how they operate.
The first chapter defines sanctions, provides their typology, and distinguishes four main stages of their historical development. The second chapter shows that sanctions do not have a uniform legal basis in international law, but, rather, fall under different institutions, depending on their author and the grounds for their adoption.
In addition to UN collective sanctions, current international law also knows other types of collective sanctions as well as autonomous sanctions, which usually qualify as retorsion or (individual or collective) countermeasures.