A Model Humanitarian Intervention? Reassessing NATO's Libya Campaign

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan J. Kuperman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Weapons Proliferation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Nato Intervention

NATO's 2011 humanitarian military intervention in Libya has been hailed as a model for implementing the emerging norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P), on grounds that it prevented an impending bloodbath in Benghazi and facilitated the ouster of Libya's oppressive ruler, Muammar al-Qaddafi, who had targeted peaceful civilian protesters. Before the international community embraces such conclusions, however, a more rigorous assessment of the net humanitarian impact of NATO intervention in Libya is warranted. The conventional narrative is flawed in its portrayal of both the nature of the violence in Libya prior to the intervention and NATO's eventual objective of regime change. An examination of the course of violence in Libya before and after NATO's action shows that the intervention backfired. The intervention extended the war's duration about sixfold; increased its death toll approximately seven to ten times; and exacerbated human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors. If it is a “model intervention,” as senior NATO officials claim, it is a model of failure. Implementation of R2P must be reformed to address these unintended negative consequences and the dynamics underlying them. Only then will R2P be able to achieve its noble objectives.

The Dangers of the Dissemination of Misinformation in Implementing the Responsibility to Protect

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cherine Foty
Keyword(s):  
Regime Change ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Community ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
Initial Report ◽  
Initial Decision ◽  
Domestic Affairs

The creation of the responsibility to protect doctrine reformulated the historical notion of humanitarian intervention. The new doctrine was centered around the principle of nonintervention, a basic precept of the u.n. Charter system, with its initial report explicitly excluding regime change disguised as humanitarian intervention as external to the scope of the doctrine. Military intervention was only to be the means of last resort after the exhaustion of several preliminary mechanisms. In its implementation, the broad mandate of the responsibility to protect has been harshly criticized because it opens the possibility for powerful States, often seeking regime change, to interfere in the domestic affairs of weaker States. This article will first discuss (i) the chronology and evolution of the doctrine, (ii) situating it in the context of the u.n. Charter prohibition on the use of force and articulating its nonbinding nature. It will then examine (iii) the cases of Libya and Syria, focusing on the initial decision to intervene and how the dissemination of misinformation has served to promote military interventions where they would otherwise be considered illegitimate. The article will conclude with a brief discussion of (iv) how the international community can move beyond misapplication and seek to limit its abuse.

scholarly journals Humanitarian intervention and the protection of civilian populations

2009 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-35
Author(s):  
Isiaka Badmus
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Vulnerable Populations ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Human Security ◽  
The State ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Classical Approach ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
State Relations

The author interrogates the critical question of whether forcible humanitarian intervention be legitimised in spite of clear contradiction to the classical norms of inter-state relations. Classical approach puts emphasize on the principle of sovereignty when governments become the perpetrators of human rights abuses of their citizens, or if states have collapsed into civil war, chaos, and disorder. The author examines this security debate by juxtaposing the age-old doctrine of humanitarian intervention vis-?-vis the imperatives of the concept of ' Responsibility to Protect'. The author argues that humanitarian intervention, due to the ambiguities and controversies surrounding its application, has become an anachronism, which ultimately led to the conceptualisation of Responsibility to Protect vulnerable populations. This approach is based on its concerns with human security as against that of the state and its relevance as arbiter to the longstanding discord between sovereignty and intervention.

Perilous Interventions and the Indian Debate on r2p: A Case of Limited Engagement and Missed Opportunity

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
Kudrat Virk
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Human Rights Protection ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Narrow Focus ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Missed Opportunity

This article reflects on Hardeep Singh Puri’s approach towards the responsibility to protect (r2p) in Perilous Interventions, and, in so doing, also on the approaches generally taken in the Indian debate on the subject. It looks, in particular, at issues that both tend not to consider, limiting their contribution to the discourse on r2p. In this regard, the book is characteristic of critical Indian assessments of r2p, which have a narrow focus on the norm’s interventionist pillar and a further tendency to view it through a West/non-West, interest-based lens. This, in turn, contributes to an internal discourse that pivots on selected, individual cases of intervention – as does the book – while precluding a richer and conceptual engagement with the norm. The book is also preoccupied with the negative consequences of military intervention and the lessons of failure, so much so that it misses an opportunity to consider more fully how the use of force for human-rights protection might be made less perilous or less necessary.

Part VI Human Rights and General International Law, Ch.34 The Use of International Force to Prevent or Halt Atrocities: From Humanitarian Intervention to the Responsibility to Protect

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thakur Ramesh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
United Nations Security Council ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Understanding ◽  
Historical Origins

This article examines the history of the use of international force for preventing atrocities and human rights abuses. It analyses the concept of humanitarian intervention in the context of the historical origins of sovereignty and the reasons behind the shift to the use of the term responsibility to protect (R2P). It evaluates the progress of R2P from its unanimous endorsement in 2005 to its implementation in Libya in 2011. This article also discusses the role of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in implementing R2P and the General Assembly in refining the concept and building political understanding and support for the norm.

scholarly journals Examining of Relationship between Responsibility to Protect & Sovereignty of States in Light of Practice of International Community

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 256
Author(s):  
Alireza Karimi ◽  
A. Koosha ◽  
M. Najafi Asfad ◽  
M. T. Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
International System ◽  
International Community ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Peace And Security

With the end of the civil war and fading of military and ideological competitions of the superpowers and drastic changes in the international system, maintaining peace and security has been closely associated with the political, social economic and cultural structures of states and their behavior in observing the criteria of human rights. The Security Council as an organ, established for keeping Peace and Security has experienced great opposition to the sovereignty of states by using human rights rules as an alibi, and even has paved the way for military intervention. Normally, material breach of the human rights criteria and fundamental liberties can endanger the international peace and security. In this type of situations, the issue can be discussed in the Security Council with the request of the general assembly and the general secretary. IF the Security Council confirms a threat consequent to the material violation of human rights rules, it can enforce the required actions, regarding its obligations and authorities. The intervention of the Security Council as a representative of the international community with regard to taking decisions for humanitarian intervention in the context of the responsibility to protect and denying the absolute sovereignty of states on one hand and encouraging the states to guarantee the observance of civil rights of people and enabling them in the field of public welfare and even military intervention and protecting nations against tragedies such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, on the other hand are significant challenges. Although the responsibility to protect is practiced in the direction of legitimate intervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign nation – states with the objective of protecting humanitarian rules, actually after 2001, the chances for humanitarian measures have been decreased. In this article, we will examine this issue that from the beginning of the third millennium what effects, the concept of responsibility to protect has had by limiting the sovereignty of states and redefining it, aligned with the humanitarian intervention by the Security Council?

Humanitarian Intervention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Caplan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Real Effect ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Way

States – Western ones, at least – have given increased weight to human rights and humanitarian norms as matters of international concern, with the authorization of legally binding enforcement measures to tackle humanitarian crises under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. These concerns were also developed outside the UN Security Council framework, following Tony Blair’s Chicago speech and the contemporaneous NATO action over Kosovo. This gave rise to international commissions and resulted, among other things, in the emergence of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) doctrine. The adoption of this doctrine coincided with a period in which there appeared to be a general decline in mass atrocities. Yet R2P had little real effect – it cannot be shown to have caused the fall in mass atrocities, only to have echoed it. Thus, the promise of R2P and an age of humanitarianism failed to emerge, even if the way was paved for future development.

Humanitarian Intervention and Non-Ideal Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramon Das
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Target State ◽  
Target States

This chapter argues that the philosophical debate around humanitarian intervention would be improved if it were less ‘ideal-theoretic’. It identifies two ideal-theoretic assumptions. One, in target states where humanitarian intervention is being considered, there are two distinct and easily identified groups: ‘bad guys’ committing serious human rights abuses, and innocent civilians against whom the abuses are being committed. Two, external to the target state in question, there are suitably qualified ‘good guys’—prospective interveners who possess both the requisite military power and moral integrity. If the assumptions hold, the prospects for successful humanitarian intervention are much greater. As a contrast, some possible non-ideal assumptions are that (i) there are many bad guys in a civil war, and (ii) the good guy intervener is itself supporting some of the bad guys. If these non-ideal assumptions hold, prospects for successful humanitarian intervention are small.

Is Democracy Exportable?

2019 ◽  
pp. 724-742
Author(s):  
Pierre Salmon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Yardstick Competition ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The People

Among many aspects to the question of whether democracy is exportable, this contribution focuses on the role of the people, understood not as a unitary actor but as a heterogeneous set: the citizens. The people matter, in a different way, both in the countries to which democracy might be exported and in the democratic countries in which the question is about promoting democracy elsewhere. The mechanisms or characteristics involved in the discussion include yardstick competition, differences among citizens in the intensity of their preferences, differences among autocracies regarding intrusion into private life, citizens’ assessments of future regime change, and responsiveness of elected incumbents to the views of minorities. The second part of the contribution explains why promotion of democracy is more likely to work through citizens’ concern with human rights abuses than with regime characteristics.

scholarly journals Introducing Jus ante Bellum as a cosmopolitan approach to humanitarian intervention

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 897-919 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garrett Wallace Brown ◽  
Alexandra Bohm
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
International Community ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Systemic Problems ◽  
Public Right

Cosmopolitans often argue that the international community has a humanitarian responsibility to intervene militarily in order to protect vulnerable individuals from violent threats and to pursue the establishment of a condition of cosmopolitan justice based on the notion of a ‘global rule of law’. The purpose of this article is to argue that many of these cosmopolitan claims are incomplete and untenable on cosmopolitan grounds because they ignore the systemic and chronic structural factors that underwrite the root causes of these humanitarian threats. By way of examining cosmopolitan arguments for humanitarian military intervention and how systemic problems are further ignored in iterations of the Responsibility to Protect, this article suggests that many contemporary cosmopolitan arguments are guilty of focusing too narrowly on justifying a responsibility to respond to the symptoms of crisis versus demanding a similarly robust justification for a responsibility to alleviate persistent structural causes. Although this article recognizes that immediate principles of humanitarian intervention will, at times, be necessary, the article seeks to draw attention to what we are calling principles of Jus ante Bellum (right before war) and to stress that current cosmopolitan arguments about humanitarian intervention will remain insufficient without the incorporation of robust principles of distributive global justice that can provide secure foundations for a more thoroughgoing cosmopolitan condition of public right.

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