Humanitarian intervention is morally and legally justified in response to internal atrocities, even at the expense of national sovereignty.
The ongoing violence in Syria has raised the specter of intervention by external forces in order to address the growing humanitarian crisis. Yet to this point, no foreign government or body has been willing to intervene. The legitimacy of humanitarian intervention at the expense of national sovereignty has been an issue for over a century (Kahler, 2011). The most recent guidance on the issue comes from the UN General Assembly, which passed guidance known as "responsibility to protect." The final arbiter of such intervention under the R2P framework in the UN Security Council, and any nation that signed on to R2P must accept that it may one day be subject to intervention, as such action would be legal if the UNSC approves it.
The R2P mechanism was put into place because of the lack of legal framework justifying humanitarian intervention. An example...
He notes that R2P represents not only a mandate to intervene, but creates a moral obligation making it harder to "do the wrong thing, or nothing at all."
Pape (2012) argues that the doctrine of intervention has failed in the past specifically because the bar for such intervention was set too high. He points out that by the time evidence of genocide or other war crime has been uncovered, it is too late to stop the killing. R2P is a recognition that the norms surrounding intervention need to change. Where previous a nation's sovereignty was considered nearly sacrosanct, Pape makes the case that R2P resets the bar for intervention to a level that is too low, but at least it allows for intervention in a situation like Syria, should the UNSC agree.
Rauchhaus (2009) notes that one…
