Humanitarian Intervention
The neoliberal conception of the world that emerged after World War Two incorporated an expanded role for international agencies, led by the United Nations, and an expanded sense of common responsibility among nations. Humanitarian intervention is one of the ways in which this common responsibility has manifested. The process of decolonialization in particular has brought about new conceptions of sovereignty and the nation-state. The UN emphasized one of the key ways in which these ideas have changed. In the past, a nation's sovereignty was absolute, but in the modern world the move has been more towards the concept of human rights, of the individual, and this can at least in some selected cases trump the sovereign nation-state. The UN in particular has instituted the concept of the Right to Protect, meaning humanitarian intervention.
Toward Humanitarian Intervention
The UN's charter did not make mention of peacekeeping, and yet peacekeeping has become one of the UN's highly-visible roles. Conflict in many parts of the world has resulted in humanitarian crises -- populations ravaged by war were in need of help. The ability of international agencies to help has necessitated the peacekeeper -- a military force intended to keep the peace and allow for humanitarian aid to restore civil order in a region otherwise beset by conflict. By the 1990s, peacekeeping became de rigeur for the United Nations, and the peacekeeping budget at the UN grew to $3.6 billion. The UN Security Council spurred this change when it broadened the concept of "threat to peace" to include threats to the economic, social, humanitarian and ecological fields." Thus, where humanitarian intervention was once for situation's like 1980s Cambodia, it was now justified to protect social or economic interests of external nations.
In other words, humanitarian intervention on the part of the UN is not entirely altruistic. There are benefits to UN member states of such actions. Given how much the world's population has boomed since the end of the 19th century, and the intensity with which modern conflict is fought, regional conflict has the potential to create global instability. Refugee flows, famines and terrorism are all issues that can arise out of conflict, and all are better addressed through humanitarian intervention than allowing them to fester unchecked.
Humanitarian intervention has faced numerous challenges as the concept has been developed and implemented around the world. In cases like Somalia, domestic political wrangling undermined the ability of UN peacekeepers to perform their roles effectively. The Security Council, in a shining of example of how it gets in the way of actually solving problems, twiddled its thumbs while the Rwandan genocide was occurring, providing a number of lessons for future peacekeeping missions. Peacekeeping was now challenged at the existential level -- could peacekeepers truly remain neutral and committed to disarming peoples, when not all involved in a conflict are willing to acquiesce? By the time Kosovo...
2007 http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=110113576. Using NATO and Other Alliances to Counter International Terrorism The increased use of terrorism to attack foreign nations has increased during the last decade at an alarming rate and on an even more alarming scale of destruction. Following the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States by organized terrorists, and because the United States' response to that attack has since itself come under world scrutiny and criticism, the
Even if it, the tyranny of the majority would challenge the idea that sovereignty should be the utmost principle by which the world's people guide itself. Conclusion The United Nations has developed the R2P concept on the basis of its philosophical vision for the world. The organic development of sovereignty in couched in the ideal of control over territories by the people who live there. When the latter condition does not
(Somalia - UNOSCOM 1. Background) However, a major limitation of the initiative was that the UN force was limited to self-defense, which resulted in it being infective and virtually ignored by the various warlords in the regions. The United States also attempted to intervene and manage the conflict. To this end the U.S. organized a military coalition with the purpose of, "...creating a secure environment in southern Somalia for the
Interventionism Libya In the spring of 2011 -- the Arab Spring -- I was living in Cyprus. From the deck outside of my bedroom I looked out over the Mediterranean, where the sun was setting, towards the north coast of Africa. Across that water, in Libya, civil war was breaking out. A Libyan fighter pilot flew across the water to Malta, asking for asylum (Hooper & Black, 2011). Libya's leader, Muammar Qadafi,
George W. Bush made the Bolton appointment while the Senate had been dismissed for holiday and only then. Even conservatives in the U.S. Senate were never warm to the rhetoric of Bolton. He was rude, pushy, and the most anti-United Nations ambassador in the history of American diplomacy. In fact Bolton wanted the U.S. To pull out of the UN at one point. It was difficult to imagine why
Humanitarian Action in a Dangerous Age Humanitarian action in the present dangerous age necessitates "Humanitarian Intervention" and "Pre-emptive action." Human rights violations have taken place from the medieval times to the present day, throughout the world. Recently, serious and widespread human rights violations and humanitarian catastrophes have rocked the world and prompted new international responses. Cambodia, Uganda, Somalia, Rwanda, Serbia, Bosnia' Cuba and other Latin American countries, South Africa's apartheid regime, East
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