POL 1005S

Student Name:

Claire Carlisle

Student Number: CRLCLA002

Tutor:

Kwezi Sogoni

Tutorial Group:

14

Assignment:

essay

Word count:

1580

Plagiarism Declaration

1.

I know that plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarism is to use anothers work and

pretend that it is ones own.

2.

I have used the Harvard convention for citation and referencing.

Each contribution to, and quotation in, this essay/report/project/
from the work(s) of other people has been attributed,
and has been cited and referenced.

3.

This essay/report/project/.... is my own work.

4.

I have not allowed, and will not allow, anyone to copy my work with the
intention

of

passing

it

off

Signature ______________________________

as

his

or

her

own

work.

Some authors argue that humanitarian intervention and the Responsibility to

Protect violate a countrys sovereignty. Should the UN legitimise humanitarian
intervention?
Humanitarian intervention has been in the limelight for quite some time, posing
an intricate test to international society based on sovereignty principles, nonintervention policies as well as a non-use of force. After the Holocaust, state
society launched genocide prohibiting laws protecting the civilian from
mistreatment. As a result, there was recognition of human rights. By then, the
sovereignty principles, as well as non-intervention principles, conflicted wholly
with the principles of humanitarian. For instance, when sovereign states that act
as citizens security, became hostile to its people and treated sovereignty as a
warrant to mistreat or exterminate citizens, were non-intervention principle to
accord protection as international society legitimate members or were the state
to be exposed to legitimate intervention for failure to protect their citizens and
abusing them? These were some of the conflict faced by humanitarian principles
when addressing the non-intervention as well as principles of sovereignty.
Before the Cold War, an armed humanitarian intervention was illegitimate
practice since states had more value on sovereignty and orders than human
rights enforcement. Shortly, after the Cold War, liberal democratic states had a
significant attitude shift that led to new humanitarian claims from international
society. The UN declared a changing international norm that would protect
civilians from mass killings as well as genocide. Some states were totally against
humanitarian intervention citing that it was designed to interfere with the
sovereignty of the states (Weiss, 2004). This led to the formation of groups of
liberal democratic states as well as the nongovernmental organization that
aimed at building consensus on the responsibility to protect principles. The
principles elaborated that states main responsibility was protecting the citizens
but if they failed to do so, the international community were to intervene to stop
mass killing and genocide. The UN soon adopted the principle of responsibility to
protect and swore to play a crucial role in building humanitarian action
consensus and making it difficult for states to misuse humanitarian justifications.
Humanitarian intervention on war on terror has made many states to take a
skeptical standpoint. Most states have placed their strategic interests concerns
ahead of human rights concerns. They are more willing to support their own antiterror strategies as opposed to other interventions. This has led to human
intervention consensus to be undermined in most countries.
There was a continuous attempt to resolve sovereignty claims and to build the
human rights new consensuses that were competing. The main aim was on ways
to protect endangered people or people exposed to dangers of genocides. After
the adoption of the principles by UN summit, a move described as an
international affairs revolution, some questions were yet to be answered such as
how was the principle adopted? Who was it protected and what was the
implication of the future humanitarian intervention? The question of whom was it
protecting was answered when the commission formed stated that chief role of
all States was to protect the citizens (Jeremy, 2008). However, if the states failed
or terrorized its citizens, the principle of non-intervention paved a way to a
responsibility to protect internationally. The principle also covered responsibility
to prevent crises and to rebuild failed states.

There has been emerging intergovernmental organization for facilitating conflict

resolution among states and also for dealing with conflict within states. These
IGOS perform several functions that improve cooperation possibility. Some of the
functions include providing states with a forum for negotiating conflicts.
Moreover, these forums make cheap to discuss issues with other states members
(Karen, 2006). IGOs provide information that enhances transparency thus
misperceptions are kept to the minimal. Another major function of IGOS is that
they facilitate linkages of issues hence enhancement of cooperation. By allowing
states to handle long term perspective, IGOS become less concerned about
payoffs. Finally, IGOS enhances ineffectiveness by allowing impartiality. UN has
been the most prominent IGOS that take part in conflict resolution. However, the
role of UN has shifted from being internal to international. This has led to a lot of
contradiction between UN support for self-determination as well as national
sovereignty. The involvement in internal conflicts in other nations has also raised
questions. For instance, UN charters allow some mechanisms that facilitate
conflict resolution such as negotiations, mediations, conciliation and many
others. The chapter v of the charter promotes activism in bringing peace to some
region in states. . It is in the mandate of UN to address various aspects of
humanitarian situations as well as the conflicts since they possess unparalleled
agencies collectively.
There have been legal cases for the intervention of human rights. The
commonly known were counter restrictions and the moral justification of the
cases. Counter restrictionists elaborated on individual cases and humanitarian
intervention collectively that claimed UN commitment to protecting human rights
fundamentally. The second claim stated that that there were humanitarian
interventions rights in customary law internationally. In such cases, human rights
were of great significant just like peace and security in UN charter (Karen & Ivan,
2011).
The human rights protection has been identified as principle functions of UN
system. As a result, the counter restrictions have read exception in humanitarian
to raise a ban on the application of force in UN charter. However, there were
other counter restrictionists that admitted the absence of the legal basis for
humanitarian intervention unilaterally in UN charter. In such cases, they argued
that intervention in human rights was allowed in customary law internationally.
Conversely, customary international rule could only be counted if the states
engage in practices claimed to have such law status (Stephanie, 2003). This was
done by abiding by the law since the state had beliefs that the law permits it.
Mostly, some problems were witnessed in such cases such as exaggeration of the
extent of consensus about the laws against the use of force.
States were likely to take advantage of humanitarian motives to cover their selfinterest nationally if there was presence of an impartial mechanism to decide
when to permit humanitarian intervention. For instance, Hitler argued that it was
of great significance to invade Czechoslovakia to protect the German population,
life, and liberty. In such a case creation of human intervention rights only made it
easier for the leaders to justify their interference with affairs of the states.
Mostly, the right to intervention created insincere humanitarian action since selfinterest was the main intervention barrier and not sovereignty as one would have

thought. According to Chesterland 2001, humanitarian intervention would have

made the world a dangerous place to live since states would have more ways to
justify force used.
Humanitarian intervention exterior of UN Security Council mandate continues to
be a highly disputed area of international laws. This is because not very many
states support any form of humanitarian intervention. For instance, Russia and
China have a non-interference policy that has been long standing in the internal
affairs of other states. However, their worries are on the creation of a precedent
for international society to air their views on how they treat their citizens. The
use of armed forces willingly is also influenced by desperation of population
affected, geographical factors as well as regional stability, country relevance to
other community and major players attitude. The role of U.S as a standard
bearer has been disputed due to its reluctance to commit to Syria intervention.
This is because the US limits itself to give an arm to the opposition and also the
fact that they are working with Russia to convene a peace conference that will
bring together rebels and the current regime. The U.S has also demonstrated
that it faces a lot of challenges during the intervention. Currently, the world is
experiencing limited options to respond to humanitarian crises. AS a result, the
UN formed principles to respond to the humanitarian disaster.
Recognition of human rights by UN made states society to launch genocide
prohibiting laws protecting the civilian from mistreatment. This has led to the
sovereignty principles, as well as nonintervention principles, being conflicted
wholly with the principles of humanitarian. Therefore, an armed humanitarian
intervention become illegitimate practice since states had more value on
sovereignty and orders than human rights enforcement. When UN declared a
changing international norm that would protect civilians from mass killings as
well as genocide, some states were totally against humanitarian intervention
citing that it was designed to interfere with the sovereignty of the states. This led
to continuous attempts by UN to resolve sovereignty claims and to build the
human rights new consensus that were competing; the main aim was on ways to
protect endangered people or people exposed to dangers of genocides.
The UN should legitimize humanitarian intervention because the intentions of a
state are often not in the best interest of the people but in the best interest of
the people in power, the economy and the countrys political agenda. If a state is
thriving it often can mean that the people are suffering as was seen in the
Russian Tsardom. States often come short in the Responsibility to Protect
because they may in fact be the initiators of violence if their country decides to
go to war. The people of the country then have to go to war for their state which
is the opposite of being protected by their state. If the UN legitimized
humanitarian intervention it would force states to be more accountable for their
actions and enforce a greater degree of caution when taking drastic decisions
that encroach on their peoples fullness of life or safety and security in their
state.

References
Chesterman, S. 2001. Just War or Just Peace: Humanitarian Intervention in
International
Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Jeremy S. 2008. Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect in
Africa In
John Akokpari and Daniel Zimbler (eds.) in Africas Human Rights Architecture
(Johannesburg: Jacana Media) pp. 45-67.
Karen S. 2006 International Organisations (Ch 7) in Patrick J McGowan, Scarlett
Cornelissen and Philip Nel (eds.) in Power, Wealth and Global Equity. (Cape Town:
UCT Press). Pp.147-162.
Karen A., M., & Ivan M., A. 2011. Contending Perspectives: How to think about
International Relations Coherently in Mingst and Arreguin (2011) in Essentials of
International Relations 5th ed. (New York: WW Norton & Company) pp.65-92.
Stephanie L. 2003. International Relations (Cambridge: Polity), pp. 79-96
Weiss T. 2004. The Sunset of Humanitarian Intervention? The Responsibility to
Protect in a Unipolar Era in Security Dialogue vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 135-153.