Humanitarian intervention has been described by some scholars as humanitarian imperialism. Given such principles as the “doctrine to protect”, is this a valid assertion?
Plan
· Introduction
· Define Humanitarian intervention and the importance of it.
· Define imperialism
· State stance
· Body (1)
· Discuss humanitarian interventions on a global scale – where it came about from, rwanada, then why it may be seen as imperialism
· Analyse the pros and cons in detail and the scholars who hold a view on this
·
coercive measures by outside military forces to ensure access to civilians or the protection of rights without the consent of local political authorities
R2P – from the 1990’s Rwanda issue which we stepped back from.
Human rights violations
In Somalia in 1992-94 the UN Security Council decided that the ‘human tragedy’ alone represented a ‘threat to international peace and security’ which warrants the use of military forces. (UN resolution 794) Bellamy (2004, p.70) claims that “By the mid- 1990’s there was widespread recognition of the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention sanctioned by the Security Council.” In 1999 Tony Blair claimed that “sovereignty is not a veil that human rights abuses can hide behind”. (Blair, 1999) Also, in early 2001, Tony Blair spoke about “a ‘moral duty’ to provide international military and humanitarian action in countries anywhere”. (BBC, 2001) In 1999, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan talked about “two sovereignties”: one of states and one of human beings. (Annan, 1999) In a Nobel Peace Prize speech in 2001 he said that “the sovereignty of states must no longer be used as a shield for gross violations of human rights.” (Annan, 2001) This lead to the call for the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which was formed on initiative from the Canadian Government in September 2000, to address these issues. The report called the ‘responsibility to protect’, which the ICISS had been working on throughout 2001 and released in December 2001, is addressing the notion of sovereignty versus intervention and attempting to create moral and legal legitimacy for the norm of intervention. It shifts the focus from a ‘right to humanitarian intervention’ to a ‘responsibility to protect’, thus emphasizing the international community’s moral responsibility to protect citizens all over the world. (ICISS, 2001, Potter, 2006) The principle of the ‘responsibility to protect’, which will be discussed later...
