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Humanitarian Intervention

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|HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION |

|INTRODUCTION |

Humanitarian intervention poses a hard test for any international society built on principles of sovereignty, non-intervention, and the non-use of force. Immediately after the Holocaust, the society of states established laws prohibiting genocide, forbidding the mistreatment of civilians, and recognizing basic human rights. These humanitarian principles often conflict with principles of sovereignty and non-intervention.

Sovereign states are expected to act as guardians of their citizens’ security, but what happens if states behave as criminals towards their own people, treating sovereignty as a licence to kill? Should tyrannical states be recognized as legitimate members of international society and accorded the protection afforded by the non-intervention principle? Or, should states forfeit their sovereign rights and be exposed to legitimate intervention if they actively abuse or fail to protect their citizens? Related to this, what responsibilities do other states or institutions have to enforce human rights norms against governments that massively violate them?

Armed humanitarian intervention was not a legitimate practice during the cold war because states placed more value on sovereignty and order than on the enforcement of human rights. There was a significant shift of attitudes during the 1990s, especially among liberal democratic states, which led the way in pressing new humanitarian claims within international society. The UN Secretary-General noted the extent of this change in a speech to the General Assembly in September 1999. Kofi Annan declared

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