Humanitarian Intervention

Humanitarian Intervention

Introduction

Taxes and death have always been part of our lives, so as the debate that whether nations should have the authority or right to intervene in the affairs of others. Humanitarian wars intended to protect potential victims whereas be neutral the whole time. Although, there has been incidents where human intervention has failed still there is a strong need for nations to opt for the alternative of human intervention. This paper will discuss three factors of human interventions; concept of human intervention, intention behind human interventions and lastly the failures of human intervention. By doing so, the discussion will highlight the relevance of the concept of human intervention while presenting the pros and cons of the intention behind human interventions. In order to do so adequately, the discussion will also elaborate on the failures of human intervention.

Discussion

Humanitarian intervention can be defined as the use or threat of power by an external force, or party to safeguard the citizens of a country or state from mass scale infringement of their human rights. Humanitarian intervention has both admirers as well as critics. Humanitarian intervention's detractors are of the view that no international body or state should have the power to hamper the sovereign and local affairs of some other country, regardless of the fact that internal situations appear to be deteriorating. The critics take sovereignty as a basic component of the global system which must not be compromised at any cost. In the society of states, human intervention is laden with normative, legal, and political controversy. The twin normative pillars of the international society, enshrined in the United Nations Charter, are state sovereignty and the duty of non intervention. First, all states enjoy equal sovereignty, or a claim to the supreme authority within their territorial and political jurisdictions. Second, a natural corollary to uniform state sovereignty is the duty of all states to refrain from intervention in the internal affairs of other states. Coercive acts by states that affect the political independence or territorial integrity of another state are, therefore, considered illegitimate. According to the international society tradition, these norms combine to deter aggressive, powerful states from imperialistic enterprises and a pluralistic, international society of self-governing political communities. Increasingly, however, these rules of the international society have been challenged by the dominance of the global human rights movement. The doctrine of human rights asserts universal standards of treatment owed to all people by a bureaucratic society. Against the pluralist strand of the English School, solidarity within the international society tradition endorse human rights doctrine, and have argued for an international right to intervention against states that fail to protect their members from severe human rights violations such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other large-scale crimes against humanity.

The intervention in humanitarian war is shaped to unbiased and safeguards the victims which are being targeted. This pointer regarding humanitarian intervention makes it a complex concept to grasp. A philosophy has been derived from lessons gained from Holocaust, genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda and ...