Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (original) (raw)

During the last decade of the 20th century, there were nine humanitarian interventions: in Northern Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Albania, Kosovo, East Timor, and Sierra Leone. Of the cases cited, the consent of the home government was obtained in five cases and two others had explicit Security Council authorization. However, two cases were carried out without consent of the government or authorization by the UN Security Council: Northern Iraq and Kosovo. NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia in 1999 received a particular attention and condemnation. Without UN Security Council’s resolution for that “air campaign”, there was justification that the action was about prevention of humanitarian catastrophe. This paper will attempt at identifying legal position of humanitarian intervention in international law; whether or not, and in what circumstances, it is safe to claim that there exists the right to humanitarian intervention. At the beginning of the 21st century, there has been extensive consideration of the “responsibility to protect” as a composite concept comprising the responsibilities to prevent humanitarian catastrophe, to react immediately when they do occur and to rebuild afterwards. Such an approach may be seen as an effort to redefine the principle of humanitarian intervention in a way that seeks to minimize the motives of the intervening powers. The paper also deals with the relation and differences between humanitarian intervention and “responsibility to protect” concept.