What is Named, What is Silenced: UN Sanctions and the Governance of SGBV

This Article examines the incorporation of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) into United Nations targeted sanctions regimes within the framework of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda. Through a systematic analysis of all fifteen UN sanctions regimes currently in force, it explores how SGBV has been translated into designation criteria and operationalized in listing practice. The Article demonstrates a persistent gap between normative recognition and operational application. Indeed, SGBV-related criteria are inconsistently implemented, rarely function as autonomous grounds for designation, and remain shaped by political selectivity within Sanctions Committees. Adopting a feminist and intersectional approach grounded in international law, the Article argues that the UN sanctions system operates as a technology of governance that produces hierarchies of harm, visibility, and responsibility, determining which forms of gendered violence become sanctionable and which remain institutionally marginalized. The Article concludes by developing a reform program aimed at reducing the temporal, political-institutional, and epistemological gaps that constrain the implementation of SGBV-related sanctions, while highlighting the structural limits of sanctions within contemporary security governance.