INTERVENE MILITARILY IN ORDER TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS

Intervene Militarily In Order To Protect Human Rights

Intervene Militarily In Order To Protect Human Rights

Introduction

Since the early 1990s, humanitarian agencies have been intricately involved with the international community's use of military force in situations of gross human rights violations and grave breaches of international humanitarian law. Often already in a country for many years before an international military intervention, or arriving in its slipstream, humanitarian agencies have been involved in the decision for and the impact of such interventions in many different ways.

Intervene Militarily In Order To Protect Human Rights

Humanitarian agencies have called outright for military intervention and not got it. They have called for intervention and got it. They have provided muted acceptance of interventions. (Coquoz, 2000, p14) They have welcomed interventions. They have strongly objected to interventions. They have called for an intervention and then objected to it as it unfolds in practice. Their own protection has been given as a major part of the reason for military intervention in Security Council resolutions. They have worked closely with international military forces and have sometimes depended on them during an intervention. They have also castigated intervening forces for their military and personal behaviour under international humanitarian law and wider human rights norms. They have remained completely silent on particular interventions.

As a result of such diversity, this paper cannot talk with confidence of a singular humanitarian agency “perspective” on military intervention. More realistically, it needs to recognise a variety of “perspectives” as many agencies have a slightly different take on the use of force and all agencies tend to reserve their judgement on military interventions on a case-by-case basis. Also, to be frank, some agencies give the subject more thought than others. So, to generalise about a single humanitarian position on all military intervention would be unwise. Having said this, the Rwandan genocide is perhaps one event around which it is possible to talk about a common humanitarian position on intervention. In truth, this consensus has probably emerged more firmly in retrospect and was by no means apparent at the time of the genocide. But there is now a real conviction amongst humanitarian agencies that the Rwandan genocide did demand the fast and forceful international military intervention that it never received. This conviction, emanating from the benefit of hindsight, obviously does nothing for the thousands murdered and their surviving families but it may serve as an essential common starting point for humanitarian agencies in their understanding of and their arguments for and against the use of force in future. (Coquoz, 2001, p15)

Despite the essential variety of humanitarian perspectives on particular military interventions, it is possible to identify a number of common themes that most concern humanitarian agencies about military intervention. All agencies seem to encounter these themes to some degree as they struggle to address what Nicholas Wheeler recognises as “the agonizing moral choices” involved in any decision to use force in the rescue and protection of people enduring massive cruelty and ...