Humanitarian Intervention

The threat or use of force by an outside party to protect the citizens of a state from large-scale violations of their human rights. Humanitarian intervention has supporters as well as detractors. Critics of humanitarian intervention argue that no state or international institution should have the right to interfere in the sovereign, domestic affairs of another state, no matter how far the internal situation seems to have deteriorated or how many innocent people face extermination. They consider sovereignty a basic building block of the international system that should not be compromised.

Supporters argue that because all legitimate states now support human rights and share similar norms regarding humane treatment, issues of sovereignty have become irrelevant. They feel that human rights have become internationalized and can no longer be ignored by governments.

United Nations actions since the end of the Cold War reflect a growing acceptance of the concept of humanitarian intervention. Although Article 2 of the UN Charter explicitly forbids the United Nations from acting “in the domestic jurisdiction of any state,” in reality the situation has moved beyond that narrow definition. On several occasions, the UN Security Council has judged some humanitarian crises as so dire and so much a “threat to international peace and security” that missions have been approved even in violation of a nation's sovereignty.

Most legal scholars believe that the UN Security Council has a legal right, but not a legal obligation, to act in defense of human rights, even in a sovereign country. Although moral reasons may demand action, most scholars would argue that states or international organizations have no right to act without Security Council authorization. Some theorists have broadened the definition of sovereignty, saying that sovereignty does provide some guarantees against outside intervention, but also automatically translates into a responsibility to protect the rights of one's citizens.

Even if there is general agreement that the modern era has seen greater acceptance of humanitarian intervention, critics charge that the United Nations has often taken too long to come to consensus and launched actions too late. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda is a case in point: The international community became involved only after hundreds of thousands of people had been slaughtered. Others remain skeptical that political differences among the permanent members of the Security Council can ever be overcome to an extent that the nations will consistently agree on acts of humanitarian intervention. Two recent examples are Chechnya—where Russian offensives have led to considerable human suffering, but Moscow [Page 342]has insisted that the war is an internal matter—and the 1999 conflict in Kosovo.

In the run-up to the Kosovo conflict, China and Russia indicated that they would oppose any UN Security Council resolution authorizing force against Yugoslavia. As a result, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the main Western alliance, felt compelled to act and began what it labeled a humanitarian campaign to protect the ethnic Albanians.

The 78-day-long NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo—which was unauthorized by the UN Security Council, lacked international consensus, and was based on controversial legal principles—is viewed as a watershed in the development of humanitarian intervention. Importantly, the West's most powerful military alliance had launched a large-scale campaign, with ostensibly no ulterior motives other than preventing the mass violation of human rights.

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