Ending humanitarian atrocities has become as important for the United Nations as preventing interstate war. This book examines the transformation of UN operations, analysing its changing role and structure. Ramesh Thakur asks why, when and how force may be used, and argues that the growing gulf between legality and legitimacy is evidence of an eroded sense of international community. He considers the tension between the United States, with its capacity to use force and project power, and the United Nations, as the centre of the international law enforcement system. He asserts the central importance of the rule of law and a rules-based order focused on the United Nations as the foundation of a civilised system of international relations. This book will be of interest to students of the United Nations and international organisations in politics, law and international relations departments, as well as policymakers in governmental and non-governmental international organisations.

The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect

In spite of the current preoccupations, in the United States and in the United Nations, with the wars on terrorism and the occupation in Iraq, humanitarian intervention remains an important policy option. Future debates and action are framed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, whose report entitled The Responsibility To Protect and an accompanying research volume were published in December 2001. Future humanitarian crises will arise in conjunction with the need for military force to protect human beings, and so four shortcomings of the report are evident. First, the report is not as forward-looking as the commissioners thought or as many opponents feared. Second, the concerns of the most vehement critics, especially developing countries, are misplaced because the problem is too little humanitarian intervention, not too much. Third, the purported danger that the concept of the responsibility to protect might become a Trojan Horse to be used by the great powers to interven...

The Sunset of Humanitarian Intervention? The Responsibility to Protect in a Unipolar Era:

On 6 April 1994, President Habyarimana of Rwanda and several top government officials were killed when their plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on its approach to Kigali airport. Within hours, members of the Hutu-dominated government, presidential guard, police, and military started rounding up and executing opposition politicians. The army set up roadblocks at 50 to 100 meter intervals throughout Kigali. The airport was surrounded and sealed. Telephone lines were cut. Military intelligence distributed lists of the government's political opponents to death squads: “every journalist, every lawyer, every professor, every teacher, every civil servant, every priest, every doctor, every clerk, every student, every civil rights activist were hunted down in a house-to-house operation. The first targets were members of the never-to-be-constituted broad-based transitional government.” Once the Tutsi leadership and intelligentsia were killed, the army, presidential guard, and the Interahamwe militia, the youth wing of the ruling Hutu party, began executing anyone whose identity cards identified them as Tutsis. When checking identity cards became too time-consuming, they executed anyone with stereotypical Tutsi features. On 9 April, the Interahamwe militia directed by presidential guards hacked to death 500 men, women, and children who had taken shelter in the Catholic mission in Kigali. In another incident, the Interahamwe shot 120 men and boys who had taken refuge in St. Famille Church in Kigali. Soldiers killed any wounded Tutsis who made it to hospital. One killer went so far as to thank hospital staff for providing a “Tutsi collection point.”

Humanitarian Intervention: The humanitarian intervention debate

The paper makes the liberal argument for intervening by force to end or prevent serious human rights abuses. It relies on twin assumptions of liberal moral and political theory: that the primary purpose of governments is to protect human rights, and that victims of grievous injustice are entitled to outside help. Humanitarian intervention is legitimate when it is directed at suppressing human rights abuses and complies with the doctrine of double effect. The paper considers and rejects well-known objections: that interventions undermine respect for international law, that interventions are comissive acts and thus more objectionable than non-interventions because these are simple omissions, that humanitarian interventions are objectionable because they kill innocent persons, and that humanitarian interventions undermine global stability. Finally, the paper discusses the libertarian objection that humanitarian interventions are illegitimate because governments do not have the right to send persons to fight for the liberty of foreigners. It concludes that this objections has some force against conscription but not against the use of a voluntary army.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID291661_code011125630.pdf?abstractid=291661&mirid=3&type=2

Humanitarian Intervention: The liberal case for humanitarian intervention

This article presents a critical overview of the contemporary practice of post-conflict peacebuilding (PCPB), arguing that contemporary post-conflict operations rest upon the assumption that a sophisticated social engineering approach could replace, or accelerate, a process of state formation that occurs rather more organically. Yet, PCPB is subject to the same tensions and dilemmas as the process of state formation. Many recent post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation programmes have been conducted with little critical self-reflection on the underlying assumptions or structural biases of PCPB efforts. One major reason for this is the missing connection, in the minds of policymakers and practitioners, between security and development concerns. The concept of human security can help bridge this gap and is also compatible with a form of Popperian ‘piecemeal’ social engineering that is more consistent with a critical approach to PCPB.

Peace, Security and Development in Post-Conflict Environments:

(2002). Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty. The International Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 81-102.

M. Ayoob

Papers

Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty