India on Humanitarian Intervention and Responsibility to Protect: Shifting Nuances

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeshi Choedon
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Internal Conflicts ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Peace Enforcement ◽  
Sceptical View ◽  
Power Configuration

India’s opposition to humanitarian intervention has been influenced by its colonial experience and its predisposition towards the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention. However, India did not adopt a strident opposition in the post-Cold War due to the changed power configuration. The article discusses how India adopted a cautious approach and yet used every opportunity to remind the international community the baleful effect of intervention in the internal affairs. After securing concession to a considerable extent on the ambitious Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and when most of the countries showed an inclination to accept humanitarian intervention in the form of ‘R2P’ at the UN summit in 2005, India grudgingly went along accepting it. India participated in the deliberation on the implementation of R2P and took its stand on various crises in which R2P was evoked. The experience of NATO’s Libya operation under R2P was regarded as substantiation of India’s apprehension of the misuse of the concept, and India reverted its position to the sceptical view of humanitarian intervention/R2P. By mere complaining about the mixing of peace enforcement with peacekeeping, when the United Nations deployed ‘intervention brigade’ for the protection of civilians, India lost the opportunity to take the initiative to propose a new mechanism to deal with the humanitarian crisis in atrocious internal conflicts.

Peacekeeping and the Responsibility to Protect

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 134-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Hassler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
International Community ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
International Solidarity ◽  
Primary Responsibility ◽  
Peacekeeping Forces

This article examines the debate surrounding the responsibility to protect [R2P] with particular reference to the use of peacekeeping forces in that regard. Post-Cold War, human protection had expanded into a matter of international concern. Yet, where formerly humanitarian intervention was the mot du jour, a change in conceptual vocabulary led to the introduction of R2P and to a redefinition of sovereignty. Accordingly, the primary responsibility to protect its citizens rests with the sovereign state but, owing to international solidarity, the residual responsibility rests with the international community. Contextually, R2P is embedded in a continuum of responsibilities: prevent, react and rebuild. Proponents of the concept already see a norm in development. Still, divisions and confusion remain concerning the concept’s legal basis, its scope and its parameters. This is particularly relevant in view of peacekeeping forces, which have been increasingly deployed for humanitarian purposes. Because of ill-defined mandates and an overextension of resources, however, traditional peacekeeping is no longer suitable, lacking the resources, the personnel and the necessary expertise. To be able to fulfil the goals of R2P, peacekeeping will have to be redefined and the forces equipped with more robust mandates or fail.

22. Humanitarian Intervention

2018 ◽  
pp. 334-349
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy ◽  
Stephen McLoughlin
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Security ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Post Cold War

This chapter examines the implications of humanitarian intervention for international security. It considers the debate between those who argue that the protection of civilians from genocide and mass atrocities is far more important than the principle of non-intervention in certain circumstances and those who oppose this proposition. This has become a particular problem in the post-Cold War world where the commission of atrocities in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur prompted calls for international society to step in to protect the victims with military force if necessary. Humanitarian intervention causes problems for international security by potentially weakening the rules governing the use of force in world politics. The chapter first considers the case against humanitarian intervention before discussing the principle known as ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P).

The Turbulent 1990s

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Current Policy ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Policy Problems ◽  
Current Reality

The responsibility to protect is central to the current policy debate on humanitarian intervention in war zones, and so it is instructive to explore its immediate post-Cold War origins in the decade preceding the December 2001 release of the report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The history of the turbulent decade of the 1990s is essential to understanding the normative and policy problems that the Commission was trying to resolve as well as the remaining contestation that surrounds coming to the rescue of civilians caught in the throes of war. This chapter provides a sense of the practical and political problems that animated the development of R2P along with the distance yet to be covered to make mass atrocities an unpleasant memory instead of an ugly and continuing current reality.

22. Humanitarian Intervention

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Society ◽  
International Security ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Post Cold War

This chapter examines the implications of humanitarian intervention for international security. It considers the debate between those who argue that the protection of civilians from genocide and mass atrocities is far more important than the principle of non-intervention in certain circumstances and those who oppose this proposition. This has become a particular problem in the post-Cold War world where the commission of atrocities in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur prompted calls for international society to step in to protect the victims with military force if necessary. Humanitarian intervention causes problems for international security by potentially weakening the rules governing the use of force in world politics. The chapter first considers the case against humanitarian intervention before discussing the principle known as ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P).

Part 2 The Post-Cold War Era (1990–2000), 47 The Kosovo Crisis—1999

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franchini Daniel ◽  
Tzanakopoulos Antonios
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Nato Intervention

This contribution discusses the forcible intervention by NATO against Serbia in 1999 in response to the situation in Kosovo. It sets out the facts and background of the crisis, along with the legal positions of the main protagonists and the reactions of the international community. It then proceeds to survey the debates surrounding the legality of the intervention and to assess the soundness of the legal justifications put forward by states and authors. Finally, it discusses the precedential value of the intervention, especially in view of claims of the existence or emergence of a rule or principle of international law permitting the unilateral use of force in response to humanitarian crises. The contribution concludes that the NATO intervention has significant precedential value in that it confirms the unlawfulness of forcible unilateral humanitarian intervention.

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