The Importance Of Humanitarian Intervention

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The UN Security Council Resolution of 1973 on Libya authorized any United Nations Member State to act through the regional organizations to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under threat of attack in the country.(Modeme) The humanitarian intervention was a result of the R2P (responsibility to protect) principle of United Nations. According to Hall(302) : “when a state interferes in the relations of other states without the consent of one or both of them, or when it interferes in the domestic affairs of another state irrespective of the will of the latter for the purpose of maintaining or altering the actual condition of things within it .” As the government of Libya was committing crimes against humanity while violating their…show more content…
The language of the UN Charter is the convincing factor that claims the illegality of the intervention. Nothing in the charter opens the possibility that the use of force for humanitarian purposes should be understood any differently than other uses of force. Ian Brownlie claims that humanitarian intervention was understood as legally defensible prior to the charter however after the introduction of the charter it was now illegal after 1945: “By the end of the nineteenth century the majority of publicists admitted that a right of humanitarian intervention (l’intervention d’humanité) existed. A state which had abused its sovereignty by brutal and excessively cruel treatment of those within its power, whether nationals or not, was regarded as having made itself liable to action by any state which was prepared to intervene. . . . few experts believed that humanitarian intervention had survived the legal regime created by the United Nations Charter.” (Brownlie) Another important case for international law can be made in The Genocide Convention in 1948 where it is understood on an international law basis it is possible to encourage or permit intervention against genocidal regimes on its article that claims that parties confirm that genocide whether done in time of peace or war is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and punish. This is often understood as an article that permits interventions as legalities, on the other hand, the UN Charter's purposes that were established earlier are against the legality of the interventions, making anything else obsolete. It is also argued that whether illegality of such grand actions make UN's purpose look shady, it is sometimes better to serve international justice by breaking the law

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