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The Legality and Legitimacy of Unilateral Armed Intervention in an Age of Terror, Neo-Imperialism, and Massive Violations of Human Rights: Is International Law Evolving in the Right Direction?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2016
Summary
With the end of the Cold War, the United States has emerged as the sole remaining superpower whose ambition is to create a new open and integrated world order based on principks of democratic capitalism. To ensure its hegemony, the United States is prepared to resort to military action with or without UN approval when its international and national security interests are at stake. The intervention in Iraq by the Coalition of the Willing is a good example of this policy and raises the question of its legality and legitimacy under contemporary international law. May or must a state resort to military intervention against a state sponsoring terrorism or depriving its nationals of their internationally recognized human rights? The so-called “Bush doctrine” of anticipatory or preventive self-defence against a state accused of supplying weapons of mass destruction to a foreign terrorist organization, which was one of the reasons advanced by the Coalition of the Willing for intervening in Iraq, meets neither the conditions laid out in Article 51 of the UN Charter nor those of customary international law. Thus, at the present stage of development of international law, the Bush doctrine is not even lege ferenda. It is not an extension of the customary international law right of pre-emptive self-defence. Only with the approval of the Security Council pursuant to Chapter VII of the UN Charter or when it takes place within the strict confines of self-defence, can armed intervention be legitimate.
The second reason for intervening in Iraq given by the Coalition of the Willing is based on humanitarian considerations, which raises the question whether the protection of human rights can be assured from the outside. Here, international law is evolving in the right direction since the international community is prepared to adopt the concept of responsibility to protect, which justifies the use of force to protect and enforce human rights as an exception to Article 2(4) and (7) of the UN Charter. Again, such intervention is legal only when approved by the Security Council acting pursuant to Chapter VII on the ground that human right crises do not fall “essentially within the jurisdiction of any state.” However, the international community, with the exception of the Coalition of the Willing, is not yet prepared to support a right of unilateral military intervention as a last resort when the Security Council is incapable and unwilling to do so. This includes intervention motivated by the non-democratic form of government of the targeted state. Although the primary responsibility to deal with human right crises rests with the United Nations based on the responsibility to protect, it is argued that one should not rule out unilateral military action based on a customary international law right of intervention to meet the gravity and urgency of the situation provided the intervening state fully observes the necessary precautionary principles governing such type of intervention. The conclusion is that terrorism and human rights abuses can only be effectively challenged through a concerted multilateral collective approach not through the politics of unilateralism.
Sommaire
L’intervention militaire unilatérale en Iraq par les États-Unis et ses alliés sans l’approbation du Conseil de Sécurité qui repose sur la légitime défense préventive contre la menace d’actes de terrorisme et sur la responsabilité de protéger la population iraquienne contre la violation massive des droits de l’homme par Saddam Hussein pose la question de savoir si cette intervention est compatible avec les données actuelles du droit international. Les principes de non intervention et de non ingérence énoncés aux paragraphes 4 et 7 de l’artice 2 de la Charte des Nations Unies et qui ont leur source dans la règle de l’égalité souveraine des Etats conservent-t-ïls encore toute leur force? Dans l’état actuel du droit international, il est clair que l’intervention américaine en Iraq n’est ni légale ni légitime. Seul le Conseil de Sécurité avait le droit d’autoriser une telle intervention en vertu du Chapitre VII de la Charte des Nations Unies à moins que l’intervenant invoque le droit de légitime défense reconnu par l’article 51 de cette Charte ou par le droit international coutumier strictement interprété. Quant au droit d’ingérence, le droit international coutumier évolue dans la bonne direction puisqu’il commence à reconnaître l’existence d’une responsabilité internationale de protection des personnes qui sont les victimes de violations massives des droits de l’homme. En effet, les droits de l’homme font naître à l’égard de l’État des obligations internationales qui conditionnent l’exercice de sa compétence territoriale. Il s’agit d’une conséquence directe de la singularité substantielle des droit de l’homme et de leur caractère objectif Cependant, ici encore, l’intervention américaine devait être approuvée par le Conseil de Sécurité car seule l’organisation des Nations Unies a le droit de sanctionner les atteintes aux libertésfondamentales perpétrées à l’intérieur même d’un État.
- Type
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- Information
- Canadian Yearbook of International Law/Annuaire canadien de droit international , Volume 42 , 2005 , pp. 3 - 33
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Canadian Council on International Law / Conseil Canadien de Droit International, representing the Board of Editors, Canadian Yearbook of International Law / Comité de Rédaction, Annuaire Canadien de Droit International 2005
References
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21 Resolution 660, UN Doc. S/RES/ 660 (2 August 1990).
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24 Resolution 687, UN Doc. S/RES/687 (3 Apri1 1991).
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27 GA Resolution 3314, 14 December 1974, reprinted in (1974) 13 I.L.M. 710 at Article 3 (g). “The sending by or on behalf of a state of armed bands, irregulars, or mercenaries, which carry out acts of armed force against another state of such gravity as to amount to acts listed above or its substantial involvement therein.”
28 UN Charter, supra note 5 at Article 51.
29 SC Resolution 748, UN Doc. S/RES/748 (31 March 1992), with respect to Libya.
30 United Kingdom v. United States (1837), 2 Moore 409 [Caroline case].
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35 The concern is with the violation of human rights, for instance, the violation of rights found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ( 1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, and not with the violations of international humanitarian law in the case of armed conflict as in the 1949 Geneva Convention IV (civilians) (1950), 75 U.N.T.S. 287, or in cases of humanitarian assistance in the case of natural disasters or epidemics.
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41 UN Charter, supra note 5 at Articles 55.c (respect and observance of human rights by members ) and 56 (cooperation of members with the United Nations for the achievement of the purposes of Art. 55.c).
42 See notes 10–13 in this article.
43 SC Resolution 688, UN Doc. S/RES/688 (5 April 1991), (1991) 30 I.L.M. 858.
44 See also East Timor, SC Resolution 1264, UN Doc. S/RES/1264 ( 15 September 1999); Somalia, SC Resolution 794, UN Doc. S/INF/48 (3 December 1992) (partial armed intervention).
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47 See, for example, Military Activities in Nicaragua, supra note 31 at paras. 202–9.
48 Uniting for Peace Resolution, 1951,GARes. 377 (V) UN GAOR, 5th Sess., Supp. No. 20, UN Doc. A/1775 at 10. The resolution does not authorize intervention itself but only recommends action to the General Assembly. See also UN Charter, supra note 5 at Article 11 (maintenance of international peace and security); Article 13 (assisting in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms); and Article 14 (measures for the peaceful adjustment of any situation).
49 Military Activities in Nicaragua, supra note 31.
50 Note that unilateral human rights intervention has taken place on a few occasions, for instance, India in East Pakistan (1971), Vietnam in Cambodia (1978), and Tanzania in Uganda (1979).
51 Caroline case, supra note 30.
52 See the incapacity of the Security Council to act with respect to Kosovo because of the potential use of the veto by China and the Russian Federation as a result of which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened.
53 Case Concerning Questions of Interpretation and Application of the 1971 Montreal Convention Arising from the Aerial Incident at Lockerbie (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United Kingdom and Libyan Arab Jamhiriya v. United States of America) (preliminary objections), (1998), 37 I.L.M. 587 at paras. 46–50.
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55 International Development Research Centre, The Responsibility to Protect, December 2001, available at <http://www.idrc.ca> at foreword [Responsibility to Protect].
56 Ibid, at synopsis (1) Basic Principles B.
57 Ibid, at para. 6.12; and UN Charter, supra note 5 at Article 24 (responsibility of the Security Council for the maintenance of peace and security).
58 Uniting for Peace Resolution, supra note 48.
59 For example, Liberia in 1992, Sierra Leone in 1997, and NATO in Kosovo in 1999. Note that NATO is not a regional organization.
60 Responsibility to Protect, supra note 55 at para. 6.36.
61 More Secure World, supra note 34 at para. 203.
62 Ibid. at para. 204.
63 Ibid. at para. 205.
64 Ibid. at paras. 205–7. See also Scott, supra note 36 at 366–67, who favours the adoption by the UN General Assembly of a declaration as to when and how legitimate humanitarian intervention should take place with or without Security Council backing and the creation of a special committee of the General Assembly meeting in informal sessions to deal with humanitarian crises that are on an alert list so as to pass judgment should the Security Council fail to act in accordance with the criteria set out in the declaration.
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67 As in the case of the Darfur region of Sudan. See SC Resolution 1564, UN Doc. S/RES/ 1564 (18 September 2004) at para. 12; and Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the Secretary General, 27January 2005, and Report of the Secretary General, 31 January 2005, Doc. S/2005/ 57.
68 Responsibility to Protect, supra note 55.
69 See Prime Minister Paul Martin at the Francophonie summit in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso in November 2004.The Canadian government is preparing a review of Canada’s foreign policy to be released in 2005.
70 More Secure World, supra note 34.
71 For instance, so far in the Darfur region of Sudan, the African Union has taken no military action against the government of Sudan to stop it from participating in gross violations of human rights. See the sources outlined in note 67 of this article.
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