Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The 2007-08 Post-Election Crisis in Kenya: A Success Story for the Responsibility to Protect?
- Part I The Emergence of the Responsibility to Protect
- Part II The Responsibility to Protect under International Law
- Part III Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect
- Part IV International Organisations and the Responsibility to Protect
- Part V Implementing the Responsibility to Protect
- Concluding Observations
- List of Contributors
- General Index
- Index of Treaties and Other International Documents
11 - Has Humanitarian Intervention Become Part of International Law under: the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The 2007-08 Post-Election Crisis in Kenya: A Success Story for the Responsibility to Protect?
- Part I The Emergence of the Responsibility to Protect
- Part II The Responsibility to Protect under International Law
- Part III Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect
- Part IV International Organisations and the Responsibility to Protect
- Part V Implementing the Responsibility to Protect
- Concluding Observations
- List of Contributors
- General Index
- Index of Treaties and Other International Documents
Summary
Introduction
This chapter will show that the discourse on RtoP has not managed to contribute to any modifications of the international legal rules applicable to the use of military force (jus ad bellum), and thus has not created a legal right to unauthorised humanitarian intervention.
There is no ‘one’ authoritative definition of the concept of humanitarian intervention, but most formulations in the legal literature are similar. The definition employed in this context is narrow, and does not include so-called ‘in-and-out operations’ to rescue the intervening state(s)’ own nationals, nor pro-democratic interventions for the purpose of regime change of an illegitimate regime:
Humanitarian intervention is the use of force across state borders by an international governmental organisation, a group of states or a single state aimed at preventing or ending gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law comitted against individuals other than its own citizens, without the full and valid consent of the state within whose territory force is applied.
The main research question revolves around the important issue: ‘who’ has, or is, developing a legal right in international law to undertake humanitarian interventions under the RtoP principle? In the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document (WSO Document) on the UN reform agenda, endorsed by the world's heads of state at the Summit in New York on 15 September 2005, member states only accredited the Security Council a right to decide on military measures in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter in order to protect against grave crimes in international law under the principle of RtoP. In the following legal analysis I have used the lex ferenda proposals of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) as a point of departure, sketching the idea that other actors may have a subsidiary Right Authority to decide on military measures when the Council is unable or unwilling to protect, in order to assess the research question.
The ICISS acknowledged that the Security Council is the appropriate body to authorise military interventions, but if the Security Council rejects a proposal to protect or fails to deal with it within a reasonable time, the Commission proposed that the matter could be considered in the General Assembly under the ‘Uniting for Peace’ Procedure.
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- Responsibility to ProtectFrom Principle to Practice, pp. 157 - 172Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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