SARANGAYA, ALLAN PAUL S.

SPECIAL ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

2008957121

APRIL 10 2016

SOVEREIGNTY OF STATES AND HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

Conflict between Sovereignty versus Humanitarian Intervention has been a

subject of discussion since the 19th century. According to Jonathan Friedman and Paul
James, explicit assertions about humanitarian motives are not a new phenomenon and
military action is instead often rationalized through such moral rather than political
arguments.1 But still at 21st century, the topic remains to be discussed as whether or not
military actions based on humanitarian intervention will be recognize by the international
community to be legitimate.

In general, sovereignty is defined as supreme power or authority but with regard

to international law, sovereignty has traditionally had two, intertwined, meanings. An
internal one, of supreme authority within a country, and an external one, regarding the
right of being independent and not be subjected to any interference from other
countries.2

While in humanitarian intervention, it has been defined as a state's use of "military force
against another state when the chief publicly declared aim of that military action is

Globalization and Violence, Vol. 3: Globalizing War and Intervention

Philpott, 1997:20

ending human-rights violations being perpetrated by the state against which it is

directed."3
As these two definitions explicitly contradict each other we might even ask whether
humanitarian intervention even exists. There is no shortage of evidence that it does.
The evidence falls into two categories. The first is declarations of leaders. It is all too
easy to demonstrate that virtually every resort to force is justified by elevated rhetoric
about noble humanitarian intentions. The second category of evidence consists of
military intervention that had benign effects, whatever its motives: not quite
humanitarian intervention, but at least partially approaching it.4

As Professor Noam Chomsky said in Williams College; what are the criteria when
someone is committing a crime? He answered that its hard to find a case in history of
a genuine humanitarian intervention when carried out for humanitarian goals with
considerations of what are the consequences will be.5

With that being said the international committee made steps to set out guidelines to
protect both of these definitions. In 2000, the Canadian government and several other
actors announced the establishment of the International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to address the challenge of the international community's
responsibility to act in the face of the gravest of human rights violations while respecting
the sovereignty of states. It sought to bridge these two concepts with the 2001

Marjanovic, Marko (2011-04-04) Is Humanitarian War the Exception?, Mises Institute

https://chomsky.info/200809__/
5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77U1tlAyWVA
4

Responsibility to Protect (R2P)6 Under it, the international community (in effect
the UN) would be placed under an actual obligation to take, if necessary, coercive
action to protect people at risk of grave harm, in accordance with clear criteria. 7 The
doctrine was hailed by international affairs specialists as a new dawn for peace and
security. In a 2007 Council Special Report, former CFR senior fellow Lee Feinstein
wrote that the adoption of R2P was a watershed moment, "marking the end of a 350year period in which the inviolability of borders and the monopoly of force within one's
own borders were sovereignty's formal hallmarks."8

Humanitarian intervention is more probably a problem and should be a priority of the

international community to be discussed and remedied upon as it opens the flood gates
of powerful countries to abuse the doctrine. Perhaps a few genuine cases of
humanitarian intervention can be discovered. There is, however, good reason to take
seriously the stand of the improvident rabble, reaffirmed by the authentic international
community at the highest level. The essential insight was articulated by the unanimous
vote of the International Court of Justice in one of its earliest rulings, in 1949: The Court
can only regard the alleged right of intervention as the manifestation of a policy of force,
such as has, in the past, given rise to most serious abuses and such as cannot,
whatever be the defects in international organization, find a place in international law;
from the nature of things, [intervention] would be reserved for the most powerful states,
and might easily lead to perverting the administration of justice itself.

http://www.cfr.org/humanitarian-intervention/dilemma-humanitarian-intervention/p16524#p1
http://www.economist.com/node/11376531
8
http://www.cfr.org/humanitarian-intervention/dilemma-humanitarian-intervention/p16524#p1
9
https://chomsky.info/200809__/
7