Part 1 The Cold War Era (1945–89), 22 The Ugandan–Tanzanian War—1978–79

Human Rights Violations ◽

Self Defense ◽

Desirable Outcome ◽

Head Of State ◽

This chapter examines the conflict between Uganda and Tanzania, which resulted in the removal of President Idi Amin as head of state in the late 1970s. The initial passage lays out the facts of the case before considering the legal positions presented by the main parties to the conflict and the reactions of the international community. The final section assesses the broader international law implications of the episode. Although the legal justifications provided for Tanzania's actions by its government were vague and wide-ranging, in light of the massive human rights violations being committed by Amin, Tanzania's actions have been historically viewed as an early humanitarian intervention effort. This claim is however only somewhat supported on the facts. Ultimately, the international community's willingness to overlook the illegality of Tanzania's invasion and violation of Uganda's sovereignty (which far exceeded the scope of its right to self-defense) can be understood as a matter of political convenience, wherein the removal of a notoriously difficult head of state was viewed as a politically and morally desirable outcome.

Moving Into UNchartered Waters: An Emerging Right of Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention?

Leiden Journal of International Law ◽

10.1017/s0922156599000394 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 12 (4) ◽

pp. 759-786

Author(s):

Steven Blockmans

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Cold War ◽

International Law ◽

Large Scale ◽

Human Rights Violations ◽

Prior Authorization ◽

Post Cold War ◽

Black Letter

With the black letter law of the UN Charter denying states to unilaterally intervene in third states on humanitarian grounds, this article tries to project a picture of the moral controversy of humanitarian intervention as a balance for order and justice. The author argues that some post-cold war armed interventions may be taken as evidence of an emerging rule of international law outside the UN Charter system allowing the use of unilateral humanitarian intervention to keep a third state from committing large-scale human rights violations on its own territory. However, in the absence of prior authorization from the relevant UN organs, it is necessary to address concerns of possible abuse and manipulations of such an emerging rule. The article includes recommendations to this end.To go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive, not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little justifiable to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to submit to our will in any other respect. But there assuredly are cases in which it is allowable to go to war, without having been ourselves attacked, or threatened with attack; and it is very important that nations should make up their minds in time, as to what these cases are.John Stuart Mill, A Few Words on Non-Intervention (1859)

Part 1 The Cold War Era (1945–89), 21 The Vietnamese Intervention in Cambodia—1978

10.1093/law/9780198784357.003.0021 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Fox Gregory H

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Khmer Rouge ◽

United Nations Security Council ◽

General Assembly ◽

Armed Attack ◽

Self Defense ◽

History Of ◽

Khmer Rouge Regime ◽

This chapter discusses Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia. It begins with a history of the antagonism between the two countries, then reviews the Cambodian border incursions that ultimately prompted the invasion and then describes the invasion itself. Drawing on the extensive debate over the intervention in the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly, the chapter then reviews three legal justifications offered at the time by the two countries and third parties: (i) a self-defense claim that Vietnam properly responded to a Cambodian armed attack, (ii) humanitarian intervention to stop the horrific abuses of the Khmer Rouge regime, and (iii) an invitation by an anti-Khmer Rouge faction of Cambodians. The chapter concludes that while the Vietnamese action is most frequently cited as an example of humanitarian intervention, few states (including Vietnam) made that claim at the time. The self-defense argument is more plausible while the invitation claim does not appear consistent with known facts.

Unilateral Economic Sanctions, International Law, and Human Rights

Ethics & International Affairs ◽

10.1017/s0892679419000339 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 291-302 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Idriss Jazairy

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Cold War ◽

International Law ◽

Economic Sanctions ◽

Self Determination ◽

Berlin Wall ◽

The West ◽

Eventual Collapse ◽

The Cold War ◽

United Nations Charter

AbstractAs part of the roundtable “Economic Sanctions and Their Consequences,” this essay examines unilateral coercive measures. These types of sanctions are applied outside the scope of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, and were developed and refined in the West in the context of the Cold War. Yet the eventual collapse of the Berlin Wall did not herald the demise of unilateral sanctions; much to the contrary. While there are no incontrovertible data on the extent of these measures, one can safely say that they target in some way a full quarter of humanity. In addition to being a major attack on the principle of self-determination, unilateral measures not only adversely affect the rights to international trade and to navigation but also the basic human rights of innocent civilians. The current deterioration of the situation, with the mutation of embargoes into blockades and impositions on third parties, is a threat to peace that needs to be upgraded in strategic concern.

Three Grotian Theories of Humanitarian Intervention

Theoretical Inquiries in Law ◽

10.1515/til-2015-109 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Evan J. Criddle

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Natural Law ◽

First Century ◽

Responsibility To Protect ◽

Self Defense ◽

The People ◽

Hugo Grotius ◽

Law Of Nations

AbstractThis Article explores three theories of humanitarian intervention that appear in, or are inspired by, the writings of Hugo Grotius. One theory asserts that natural law authorizes all states to punish violations of the law of nations, irrespective of where or against whom the violations occur, to preserve the integrity of international law. A second theory, which also appears in Grotius’s writings, proposes that states may intervene as temporary legal guardians for peoples who have suffered intolerable cruelties at the hands of their own state. Each of these theories has fallen out of fashion today based on skepticism about their natural law underpinnings and concerns about how they have facilitated Western colonialism. As an alternative, this Article outlines a third theory that builds upon Grotius’s account of humanitarian intervention as a fiduciary relationship, while updating Grotius’s account for the twenty-first century. According to this new fiduciary theory, when states intervene to protect human rights abroad they exercise an oppressed people’s right of self-defense on their behalf and may use force solely for the people’s benefit. As fiduciaries, intervening states bear obligations to consult with and honor the preferences of the people they seek to protect, and they must respect international human rights governing the use of force within the affected state. By clarifying the respective responsibilities of the Security Council and individual states for humanitarian intervention, the fiduciary theory also lends greater coherency to the international community’s “responsibility to protect” human rights.

After International Law: Anthropology Beyond the “Age of Human Rights”

AJIL Unbound ◽

10.1017/aju.2021.42 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 115 ◽

pp. 289-293

Author(s):

Mark Goodale

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Cold War ◽

International Law ◽

Local Level ◽

Collective Identities ◽

Post Cold War ◽

Legal Norms ◽

Anthropological Research ◽

Legal Strategies ◽

This essay examines the ways in which anthropologists have tracked the rise and fall of international law after the end of the Cold War. It argues that anthropological research has made important contributions to the wider understanding of international law as a mechanism for social and political change, a framework for protecting vulnerable populations, and a language through which collective identities can be expressed and valorized. Yet, over time, international law has lost many of these expansive functions, a shift that anthropologists have also studied, although with greater reluctance and difficulty. The essay explains the ways in which particular categories of international law, such as human rights and international criminal justice, grew dramatically in importance and power during the 1990s and early 2000s, a shift whose complexities anthropologists studied at the local level. As the essay also explains, anthropological research began to detect a weakening in human rights implementation and respect for international legal norms, a countervailing shift that has broader implications for the possibilities for international cooperation and the resolution of conflicts, among others. At the same time, the retreat of international law from its highpoint in the early post-Cold War years has given way to the reemergence of non-legal strategies for advancing change and accounting for past injustices, including strategies based on social confrontation, moral shaming, and even violence.

Conclusion

Criminalizing Atrocity ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198850441.003.0007 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 174-188

Author(s):

Mark S. Berlin

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Cold War ◽

Civil Society ◽

International Law ◽

Criminal Law ◽

Large Scale ◽

Legal Norms ◽

Reform Processes ◽

Human Rights Norms ◽

This chapter summarizes the book’s findings and discuses their implications for research on atrocity justice, human rights, and international law. It highlights the importance of technocratic criminal law specialists in the spread of human rights norms and contrasts these actors with the types of civil society groups that receive much attention in the human rights literature. The chapter also discusses how the book’s findings complicate the narrative of the Cold War period as a time of “hibernation” for the advancement of international atrocity justice. Finally, the chapter highlights the importance of the book’s findings for understanding the domestication of international law more generally. The chapter then discusses how the book’s findings may generalize to explaining the spread of other legal norms that have been shown to be associated with improvements in human rights outcomes. It suggests a number of conditions under which the spread of legal norms will benefit from forms of technocratic legal borrowing inherent in large-scale reform processes.

After Bangladesh: The Law of Humanitarian Intervention by Military Force

The American Journal of International Law ◽

10.2307/2199432 ◽

1973 ◽

Vol 67 (2) ◽

pp. 275-305 ◽

Cited By ~ 55

Author(s):

Thomas M. Franck ◽

Nigel S. Rodley

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

International Law ◽

Use Of Force ◽

Self Determination ◽

Military Force ◽

Armed Attack ◽

Self Defense ◽

The Law

In the Bangladesh crisis, two important objectives of international law appeared to be in conflict: that of peace and that of justice. The former objective is set out in the rules of the U.N. Charter against the use of force by states except in self-defense against an armed attack. The second is found in the provisions of the Charter and in various resolutions, declarations, and covenants pertaining to fundamental human rights and self determination.

Examining the ‘age of apology’: Insights from the Political Apology database

Journal of Peace Research ◽

10.1177/00223433211024696 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002234332110246

Author(s):

Marieke Zoodsma ◽

Juliette Schaafsma

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Cold War ◽

Civil War ◽

Large Scale ◽

The Political ◽

Human Rights Violations ◽

Liberal Democracies ◽

The World ◽

It is often assumed that we are currently living in an ‘age of apology’, whereby countries increasingly seek to redress human rights violations by offering apologies. Although much has been written about why this may occur, the phenomenon itself has never been examined through a large-scale review of the apologies that have been offered. To fill this gap, we created a database of political apologies that have been offered for human rights violations across the world. We found 329 political apologies offered by 74 countries, and cross-nationally mapped and compared these apologies. Our data reveal that apologies have increasingly been offered since the end of the Cold War, and that this trend has accelerated in the last 20 years. They have been offered across the globe, be it that they seem to have been embraced by consolidated liberal democracies and by countries transitioning to liberal democracies in particular. Most apologies have been offered for human rights violations that were related to or took place in the context of a (civil) war, but there appears to be some selectivity as to the specific human rights violations that countries actually mention in the apologies. On average, it takes more than a generation before political apologies are offered.

The International Rule of Law—Rise or Decline?—Approaching Current Foundational Challenges

The International Rule of Law ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198843603.003.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 3-30

Author(s):

Heike Krieger ◽

Georg Nolte

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Cold War ◽

International Law ◽

Rule Of Law ◽

Preliminary Assessment ◽

Research Project ◽

Public International Law ◽

The Cold War ◽

International Rule

The chapter undertakes a preliminary assessment of current developments of international law for the purpose of mapping the ground for a larger research project. The research project pursues the goal of determining whether public international law, as it has developed since the end of the Cold War, is continuing its progressive move towards a more human-rights- and multi-actor-oriented order, or whether we are seeing a renewed emphasis of more classical elements of international law. In this context the term ‘international rule of law’ is chosen to designate the more recent and ‘thicker’ understanding of international law. The chapter discusses how it can be determined whether this form of international law continues to unfold, and whether we are witnessing challenges to this order which could give rise to more fundamental reassessments.

Part 1 The Cold War Era (1945–89), 15 The Indian Intervention into (East) Pakistan—1971

10.1093/law/9780198784357.003.0015 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Kritsiotis Dino

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Final Section ◽

Use Of Force ◽

Legal Framework ◽

Jus Ad Bellum ◽

Cold War Era ◽

The Cold War ◽

Further Development

This contribution discusses the 1971 Indian intervention in east Pakistan. It sets out the facts and context of the crisis, the legal positions of the main protagonists (India and Pakistan), and the international community’s reactions. It then tests the legality of the Indian intervention against the international legal framework governing the use of force as it stood at the time of the events. The final section examines if, and to what extent, the case has had an impact on the further development of the jus ad bellum, in particular whether it is a precedent for humanitarian intervention.