HUMAN RIGHTS: RESPONSIBILITY, SOVEREIGNTY AND THE LAW

Human Rights: Responsibility, Sovereignty and The Law A Call for Reform

HUMAN RIGHTS: RESPONSIBILITY, SOVEREIGNTY AND THE LAW

A Call for Reform

By: Mihreta Hreljic

Lindenwood University


ABSTRACT:

Severe debates persist in the international community on the issue of Intervention into sovereign

territory to protect human rights. The debate over interventions sparks several questions; for one

is state intervention interest driven? Or do states intervene to protect the dignity and respect of

human life? Much literature, currently available addresses either the need for intervention or the

reasons against any intervention. The reasons often associated with these debates are:

“universality” of human rights, interpretations of human rights, state boundaries, the violation of

international law and individual state interest. This research takes a different approach, it does

not argue the existence or interpretation of such documents, nor does it favor intervention over

nonintervention, but offers questions into a possible reform, where such reform would allow for

easy decision making when conflicts on international human security arise. The research also

addresses the need to recognize the Declaration of Human Rights as a guiding document, and

that the need for “universal interpretation” of such rights is one of the hindering objectives which

raises debate. Research for this topic is conducted through case study of the Balkan conflicts and

the dissolution of former Yugoslavia to emphasize on the importance of timely intervention. The

research concludes with a proposition for reform, and raises critical questions in need for

answers when making decisions of Humanitarian Intervention.

INDEX WORDS: Humanitarian Intervention, Legality, Law, Responsibility to Protect, Declaration of Human Rights, State Sovereignty, Balkans, Yugoslavia, Universality, Reform.

Human Rights: Intervention, Responsibility, State Sovereignty, and Law


By

Mihreta Hreljic, B.A

Major Professor: Ryan Guffey, Ph.D.

Reading Chair: Raymond Scupin, Ph.D. Committee: Raymond Scupin, Ph.D.

Ryan Guffey, Ph.D. Todd Richardson, Ph.D.

Table of Contents


Human Rights: Intervention, Responsibility, State Sovereignty, and Legality ............................................. 1

Purpose .................................................................................................................................................... 1

Rationale .................................................................................................................................................. 2

Significance .............................................................................................................................................. 2

Methodology ........................................................................................................................................... 2

Current Problems with Existing Literature .................................................................................................. 3

History of the Declaration ........................................................................................................................... 4

What are Human Rights? ......................................................................................................................... 4

International Law ..................................................................................................................................... 7

State Sovereignty & International Law .................................................................................................... 8

Intervention on Behalf of Humanity ........................................................................................................ 9

Justification .............................................................................................................................................. 9

State Sovereignty, Humanitarian Intervention, and Responsibility to Protect .......................................... 12

Responsibility to Protect ............................................................................................................................ 16

Responsibility to Protect combined with Humanitarian Intervention ..................................................... 18

Chapter II ................................................................................................................................................... 26

Historical Literature Review: International Law and the Responsibility to Protect .................................. 26

Intervention Against Law ....................................................................................................................... 29

Peacekeeping Measures ........................................................................................................................ 34

Challenges of Humanitarian Intervention ................................................................................................. 41

Chapter III .................................................................................................................................................. 45

The Case of the Balkans ............................................................................................................................. 45

Chapter IV .................................................................................................................................................. 61

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 61

FURTHER RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS .............................................................................. 69

References ................................................................................................................................................. 72


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Human Rights: Intervention, Responsibility, State Sovereignty, and Legality

The following research addresses the importance placed on the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights from the United Nations perspective leads to decisions made during humanitarian

crisis situations and the decision of intervention. The topic aims to address the issue of

“universality” and how humanitarian intervention practices are not universal, why there are

severe discrepancies in intervention, and why states have the option to choose to intervene or

not. Furthermore, the research will address the need for a legal basis or guideline that is not

conflicting with current international law, as it is interpreted by the United Nations. Current

International Law must be met when intervention is considered and adhered to by all member

states of the United Nations. The research will also address the current norm of the

Responsibility to Protect and how this responsibility could be used for, or against, the

Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine. In addition to explaining “moral responsibility,” the

Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine also gives states a reason to intervene on their own terms,

rather than on consensual terms.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to address the implementation tactics within The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights concerning humanitarian intervention during conflict. The

research will attempt to show that Humanitarian Intervention is an intervention of convenience

rather than of universal human rights at this time.


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Rationale

This topic addresses exactly how Humanitarian Intervention is guided and, through the

course of the research, will offer suggestions for further research into international legal

guidelines that would ultimately require nations to fully cooperate and apply intervention to all

states equally when human life is threatened.

Significance

The significance of this study is to open the discussion for a complete analysis of

humanitarian intervention and its conflicting stance with International Law, in order to offer a

solution to the controversy of “right to intervene” by setting certain guidelines where it becomes

mandatory to intervene rather than a choice. This could lead states to intervene in a timely

manner and ultimately save lives.

Methodology

This research will use a historical case study methodology and focus on a historical

perspective of prior interventions, the reason for intervention, the time-line of those

interventions, and what could have been done differently and efficiently prior to the intervention.

The research will define key concepts of Universal Human Rights, as it is defined in large part

by the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO – composed of

Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal,

Norway, and the United States at its establishment in 1949) and their role in the intervention

process. Furthermore, the study will define how Humanitarian Intervention is defined by the key


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states associated with this research, mainly the Balkans, and offer a future look into the Syrian

conflict, focusing on the difference and similarity of the Responsibility to Protect, as it is defined

by the United Nations and the International Community.

The research will explain neoliberal as well as neorealist viewpoints for intervention;

how different views enabled the intervening states to reach their decisions, as well as social

constructivism, and how the view on human rights is socially constructed, and interpreted in

different forms when it comes to intervention. The aforementioned paradigms are not the guide

of this research, but rather a philosophical aid in understanding why there are severe debates

amongst member states, and what perspectives drive these debates.

Current Problems with Existing Literature

Similar studies tend to aim their focus too much on the relation between International

Law and its conflicting stance with Humanitarian Intervention . However, this type of research

focuses a great deal on the lack of agreement between what human rights are in general, as well

as the intervention itself. The socially constructed views of many states do not agree on one

standard for human rights, thus they do not agree on one set principle of intervention at this point

in time.

Research for this study is conducted through university libraries, articles, books, and

online publications on Humanitarian Intervention. A lack of valuable interview sources from

significant members of the International Community, as well as members of the United Nations

Security Council opinions, will significantly limit the study; hence, the study has to suffice with

the given amount of data and opt for future research outside of these sources. The challenges of

obtaining valid and unbiased data from reputable outside sources is time constraining, and


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difficult to obtain without proper clearance. Valuable Information, such as direct contact with

Security Council members or State representatives would extremely aid in a complete analysis of

this topic, and is at this time unfeasible and impractical.

History of the Declaration

On December 10, 1948, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adapted by the

United Nations, setting forth a precedent for all states to acknowledge certain liberties and rights

all human beings are entitled to from birth (Ishay, 2008). This document was the starting point

of a never ending controversy. States could not agree on what a universal human right is and

cultural, ideological, and ethical conflicts arose while human rights were violated left and right.

Finally, the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine was drafted and enabled states to intervene in

the affairs of other states, which were in violation of basic human rights, e.g., genocide. The

Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine has set guidelines for intervention into sovereign states even

though the International Community had adapted charters that banned the intervention of any

state into another state’s internal affairs other than those affairs directly threatening the invading

state (Williams, 2008). Humanitarian Intervention became an exception to the rule, but not

without severe implementation problems. This research aims to address the faults which are

associated with implementation of the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine; furthermore, the

research will also address Responsibility to Protect versus actual implementation of the

Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine.

What are Human Rights?


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Human Rights are arguably the most important cross-cultural topic in today’s debates.

Agreement on one universal standard for human rights has been difficult to accomplish. The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights has set a basic standard of what states should adhere to

when it comes to human rights practices, however, human rights are far from universal, and no

state interprets the issue of human rights in the same sense as another state. What seems to be

“universally” agreed upon by most states is that there is such a thing as a human right and that

humans apart from any other species in the world have certain inherit human rights, such as right

to life, freedom of movement, and freedom from torture and bodily harm. However, each of

these rights is contextual upon its meaning (Kao, 2010). For example, the way one state

represents the right to life can differ enormously from that of another. The purpose of this study

is not to address whether intervention in the name of humanity is justified or not, but whether it

is necessary, and if so, by what and whose standards?

If the implication is that Humanitarian Intervention is justified based on human rights

violations, there will be a significant lack of consensus as to how rights and what rights were

violated. Historically, too often the decision to intervene has depended on the question as to

what human right was violated and in what State’s view (Petersen, 2011).For instance when the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervened in Kosovo in 1999, there was little agreement as

to what human rights were violated, if any at all, and the organization lacked approval from the

United Nations Security Council for intervention. Hence, the lack of consensus has caused many

interventions to be carried out without the United Nations Security Council’s approval, and those

who had obtained approval were too late in saving lives (Judah, 2008).

This research will address several historical incidents that have led to the conclusion, to

believe that there is not necessarily a need for consensus on what human rights are, just an


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overall agreement that there are certain rights given to all human beings by each state. This

research will take into account several instances where intervention was too late due to lack of

consensus on intervention.

Humanitarian Intervention is important to evaluate, because as a member of the human

race, each and every individual should take into consideration what The Universal Declaration of

Human Rights is aiming to do; in order to understand why states have a responsibility after the

drafting of the document to protect others, whether there is state interest at stake or not. As

states continue to have the option to intervene or not to intervene, the Doctrine of Humanitarian

Intervention continues to be a non-binding document. It should be made clear that this is not an

argument as to whether certain universal rights exist, for they do, but how these rights are

applied by each sovereign state is the issue at hand. With this in mind, it is the aim of this

research to establish certain ground work first and to define the key concepts of Humanitarian

Intervention, state sovereignty, a state, human rights, and humanitarianism in connection to the

United Nations. Humanitarian Intervention in this research is looking not only into military

intervention, but the overall intervention into a state, and who the intervener(s) are. Perhaps, it is

an issue of State Sovereignty, the belief that no state has the right of intervention of any form

into another state’s domestic affairs that hinders humanitarian intervention in the first place.

Because of this State Sovereignty, when Humanitarian Intervention is considered in a foreign

state, it has to have legal justification in order to proceed with its intended intervention.

Therefore, an alteration to the international law itself or Humanitarian Intervention is Necessary.

Throughout this research the need for a legal stance and guidelines that clearly identify

the requirements for intervention without the need for continuous debate over International Law

violation will be addressed. The issue most addressed is the need for pushing towards a set of


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guidelines, which states will have to uphold when intervention is deemed necessary.

Furthermore, the research will focus on examples of the United Nations initiative, Responsibility

to Protect, adapted by Canada, the United States, and France, as well as its application in

sovereign state internal affairs. The significance of this topic cannot be stressed enough, having

a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine, a

Responsibility to Protect, and International Law, does not and has not stopped the very aim of

these documents - saving human life, preventing genocide, and stopping governments from

excreting there power onto their citizens. More recently, state sovereignty has been looked at by

the international community not as being the ruler of the peoples, which reside in an individual

state, but the opposite. People have a right in steering the state as they see acceptable and expect

their governments to advocate appropriately on their behalf.

International Law

International Law is a combination of laws used to govern states and nations among

themselves, the United Nations enacted a series of International Laws binding for all states in

order to ensure future cooperation and peacekeeping. International Law governs state actions

towards one another and protects states from one another, while it still allows nations to create

treaties and trade with each other in the international arena (Green & Raz, 2012).

The notion of international law recognizes a state’s sovereignty and an invasion into another

states sovereignty, being verbal, sanction, or by force, is considered a violation of International

Law. Furthermore, if a state fails or violates International Law, there are very few actions that

the International Community at large can take against the violating state without breaking the

law of sovereignty itself, thus the law is interpreted on a state by state basis. In doing so,

International Law becomes nothing more than an idea, subject to interpretation and flexibility,


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and thus relatively invalid in upholding its legality. It is not enforceable, nor is it binding, and

even though most states acknowledge the law on a global scale, overall International Law, has

neither grounding nor standing for states to consider it binding.

State Sovereignty & International Law

In principle, International Law guides State Sovereignty and plays a vital role in

international peace and security. State Sovereignty has been the main drive for establishing

International Law on the basis of individual state security, but it comes with a price. The issue,

which will not be addressed in detail in this paper, is that International Law is open to

interpretation by each individual state, as is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in itself;

however, for the purposes of this topic the basic definition will suffice. State Sovereignty is the

absolute and uncontrollable power of an independent state to govern itself in any way it chooses,

where its power is extended to the governing of all political powers (Biersteker, 1996). The state

is entitled to govern itself, create laws, implement laws, wage war, collect taxes, make treaties

with other states, and govern its people according to state policies. Independence, legal equality,

self-government, and competency guide each states right to sovereignty, therefore humanitarian

intervention is seen as an illegal action against any state for their internal practices (Malmvig,

2006). In other words, what does not affect the International Community and is not a threat to

another state should not be regarded as a violation and should not grounds for an intervention.

This becomes the argument for non-intervention, leave the state at conflict with its citizens, and

let them solve the problems on their own. With the declaration on human rights, intervention

based on offenses against humanity has sparked worldwide debate, focused around questions

such as, “why do we intervene in country Y and not in country X where clearly the same thing is

happening? This is where this research aims to take course, the decision for or against


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intervention. If the decision is to be made on a global scale, then should the International

Community consider reforming its documents for intervention along with a complete reform of

International Law in order to eliminate controversy in the decision for intervention? Intervention

or non-intervention should not be guided by opinion, but rather by fact. Those facts need to be

incorporated into law in order to guide the decision rather than create debate.

Intervention on Behalf of Humanity

Humanitarian Intervention has not been consistent in its application of the doctrine across

the world. Several conflicts over the past six decades have taken place that have raised serious

questions about the International Community as a whole, as well as the ability to apply

International Law and Humanitarian Intervention equally to all states. Several examples exist

where the United Nations Security Council intervened because the belief existed that human

rights were being violated, where in other cases the United Nations Security Council ruled there

was no violation of human rights. This creates much speculation as to what are the requirements

and what severity constitutes an intervention. It is crucial to note that there is a need to address

the problem of ineffective and unequal intervention application, in order to save lives. Several

examples will be taken into account through the course of this topic including the Balkan Wars,

intervention into Libya in 2011, and events in Syria as they are now evolving.

Justification

Justification of intervention based on human rights is the first, yet most challenging

aspect of these issues previously discussed with Humanitarian Intervention. If there is

justification, there may be agreement on intervention; however, it is enormously difficult to


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agree on what exactly justifies human rights in itself. Cultural relativism1 may be the first charge

against justification and thus against intervention as well. Cultural relativism denies the

possibility of truth in ethics by revitalizing all moral judgments about social behavior to each

culture’s beliefs about such actions. A cultural relativist would insist upon the impossibility of

objective arbitration between competing norms. In a traditional cultural relativist view, only

those within the state can make a true assessment of the ethics and morals of that state. This

research acknowledges the fact that even within a given state there are different cultures, as the

case of the Balkans will demonstrate, however for the purpose of this study it is sufficient to

acknowledge the cultural differences and beliefs amongst states. If justification for intervention

is viewed in this regard, and if all social practices, behavioral norms, or moral ideas would only

be evaluated within one’s own, then the whole idea of universalism pertaining to human rights

would be impossible to achieve and ultimately invalid.

If traditional cultural relativism is taken into consideration when attempting to justify

intervention, then the question of toleration should be raised. Traditional cultural relativists

cannot adequately provide a full justification for human rights, but believe that each culture is

inclined to tolerate the other’s practices and thus eliminate the need for intervention on the basis

that it would not pertain to their customs. Where does traditional cultural relativism fit in with

humanitarian intervention? Traditional cultural relativism insists upon allowing states to practice

their own customs and declare it right or wrong from their perspective. However, there has been

a rejection of the traditional cultural relativist view by most contemporary anthropologists and

human rights activists (Kao, 2010). Anthropologists recognize the fact that tolerance cannot be

1 By Traditional cultural relativism I mean the type that was introducedby anthropologists in the early part of the 20th century. Franz Boos and his students emphasized cultural realitivism as a means of understanding different cultural traditions. However, some of these anthropologists equitated cultural relativism with ethical or moral relativism. Ethical relativism promites the notion that one can never impose a moral or ethical judgment on a different culture. Contemporary anthropologists do not accept ethical or moral relativism (Brown, 2008).


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the principle that justifies human rights. Contemporary anthropologists stress that cultural

relativism ought to be used as a methodological technique to study other cultural traditions and

practices, but this strategy ought not to be used as a moral or ethical calculus (Kao, 2010). Yet,

questions still remain regarding the justification of humanitarian intervention for human rights

issues. With this in mind, we pose the question of how to cope with genocide, as we have a

limited understanding of different cultural practices within differing situations such as genocide

versus a disagreement within that states borders which should be left alone by the outside world.

The drive for universal human rights has constantly been blamed on Western ideologies

by cultural relativists and ethnocentrically-inclined theorists in imposing values and principles on

differing cultures. Some have criticized the human rights revolution as a “return by the

European traditions to its natural heritage and that the global diffusion of Western human rights

is a sign of moral progress for the world” (Kao, 2010). According to Kao (2010) Christian

ethicist David Little, (1984) have argued that the recognition of international law of final

universal principles, which protect against slavery, torture, and genocide, is more related to the

idea of natural rights than any western origin or Christian European past . To take the matter

further, The Universal Declaration on Human Rights refers neither to God nor nature as being of

the declarations’ foundational underpinning, and is thus different from previous ethical

traditions. However, these differences do not necessarily mean unacceptability between states

and their views on the Issue. The Document still reflects upon the ideologies sparked during the

Enlightenment and earlier periods in the stipulation of humanity at large as a relevant moral

community

When analyzing the drafting process of The Universal Declaration on Human Rights

closely, some portions of the declaration have been grounded on traditional privileges and biases


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of the West, but many of the rights on which the declaration had been based came from various

European and Latin American documents on human rights (Kao, 2010). For example, a French

secular Jew, Laureate Cassin, was responsible for revising successive drafts in its initial stages

(Kao, 2010). Smaller nations and diverse theologians as well as various humanitarian

associations first advocated for an actual list of human rights beyond the nominal references of

the West, to the idea within the United Nations charter. The bigger states during that period i.e.,

the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, did not intend to prioritize the

promotion of human rights, as they were more concerned with the prevention of war between

nations and collective security over humanitarian rights (Goodman, 2006). Hence the problem

with “universality” and thus implementation of intervention for human rights reasons lies

explicitly in the argument that human rights are Western driven and thus cannot be universal nor

can intervention be universal in practice. This reasoning is flawed as it agrees with the notion

that state sovereignty is universal but rejects universality of human rights (Kao, 2010, pp. 131-

170).

State Sovereignty, Humanitarian Intervention, and Responsibility to Protect

The concept of State Sovereignty has been in existence for several centuries and

statehood is considered to entail a “permanent population, a defined territory, and a functioning

government” (Bourtros-Chali, 1994, p. 257). If all of these elements are met, then statehood is

awarded and state sovereignty, the ability to rule oneself without foreign interference in internal

policies, is recognized. State sovereignty is one of the fundamental principles of International


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Law; it makes outside intervention into any state a violation of International Law, where not

even the global community has the right to interfere into the domestic affairs of a sovereign state.

This leads one to question whether Humanitarian Intervention can ever exist if states are

protected by sovereignty rights? In simple terms, because The Universal Declaration of Human

Rights takes away the right of sovereign states to do what they deem appropriate to their citizens

if such state creates a violation of the basic fundamental human rights such as life, liberty, and

freedom as suggested by Rawls’ approach to political liberalism (Kao 2010, p. 62. Although the

declaration has been drafted and certain freedoms have been deemed “universal,” the

universality of these rights is subject to interpretation. Dealing with human rights that the global

community agrees upon, certain states may become a target for intervention if it is in violation of

these rights.

The concept of Humanitarian Intervention has been defined quite differently by many

scholars (Goodman, 2006). To some intervention meant verbal remarks made by one state actor

to other actor’s internal affairs, while others have defined it as the pure use of force against

another state actor who has in no way threatened the intervening actors own affairs. However,

for the purposes of this research, Humanitarian Intervention is defined in three forms. Its first

phase intervention is verbal and constitutes the discussion, examination, and the

recommendatory action, the second phase is taking measures that are coercive in nature but short

of the use of force, and last, is intervention by the use of force (Holtzgrefe & Keohane, 2003 p.

53). Humanitarian Intervention is the external use of armed forces for the purposes of stopping

flagrant violations of human rights. The unclear guidelines within the Humanitarian Intervention

Doctrine, along with the confliction of State Sovereignty, and unenforceability of International

Law, make it possible for any state, capable of intervention to be the intervener. There are


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possible complications that can arise for the intervening state, such as sanctions by the other

members of the United Nations, but per the Responsibility to Protect norm, intervention is only

possible if the states’ resources allow for it (Coady, 2002). However, if intervention is to be

deemed appropriated and State Sovereignty to be overruled by the Humanitarian Intervention

Doctrine based on grave violations of human rights. The violating state has to have caused a

deliberate act of violence from the governing authorities. Thus the intervening actor must be

from the outside with no connection or threat from the violating state being brought upon on the

actor’s own population and citizens.

The Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention violates the essence of International Law

pertaining to State Sovereignty. This raises severe debates as to where Humanitarian

Intervention should be exercised. Should states be allowed to intervene or should they wait for

the United Nations Security Council to authorize such intervention before they attack? Kofi

Annan, former United Nations Secretary General, addressed the member states following the

months after the Yugoslavian conflict, that there needs to be a consensus on what constitutes for

interventions and when an intervention can take place. The view from each states perspective

covers the spectrum between legality and illegality and brings the idea of altering international

law into consideration (Carter, 2009). It needs to be noted that Humanitarian Intervention is not

simply the use of only force against another state, but comes in forms of sanctions, verbal

intervention, and peacekeeping missions. In some cases, only necessary resources for human

survival are delivered to the citizens of a state (Buchs, 1995). Ultimately Humanitarian

Intervention is not a universal action; intervention has been carried out in the past only by those

states willing to intervene without any threat to their own nationals or their state in general.

Making the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine a non-binding document is a problem in itself,


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only to be insinuated if the willing states want to risk their name, resources, and military power.

Once a state does without the United Nations Security Council’s authorization that state becomes

subject to international law violations and its military force may be put on trial for war crimes.

The idea of Humanitarian Intervention did not start with The Universal Declaration of

Human Rights, that being said, what the declaration put forth in writing fulfills the need to

ensure protection for all humans around the world. Intervention based on humanity was

considerably seen as an act of violence acceptable for states that had ulterior motives for

intervention, such as the acquisition of more territory (Newman, 2009). During the 19th century

and the reign of the Ottoman Empire, humanitarian intervention was widely accepted and

generally approved by the international community. Exercising intervention against a state,

which was in clear violation of laws of humanity, was acceptable mostly due to nationals of

other states living in the Ottoman Territories (Todorova, 2004).

Towards the turn of the 19th century with the development of political liberalism in the

West more people became concerned with intervention for reasons of humanity (Pinker, 2011)

Intervention was defined in similar ways as today, by stating intervention was carried out for the

purposes of protecting inhabitants of another state from treatment which is so arbitrary and

persistently abusive as well as in violation of laws of humanity that it exceeds the limits of

authority within which the sovereign state who is presumed to act with reason and justice.

Concerns arose because European Community per the Treaty of Berlin was allowing intervention

every time the minimum rights of a European citizen were violated within the Ottoman Empire.

Intervention based on violation of laws of humanity became a legal right in the European states

against the Sultan of the Ottoman. However, even during this time, selfish acts of consideration

as to what human rights were and who should be protected by them kept states from intervening


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equally, rather they intervened based on nationality, similar religious beliefs, and territorial

interests rather than on “humanity” (Petersen, 2011).

As in the present case, arguments in the past have questioned the Humanitarian

Intervention Doctrine as valid and potentially would be only beneficial to powerful states that are

capable, if their interests outweighed the costs, to intervene in weaker states. The argument

arose quickly that humanitarian intervention would become a cover for underling motives that

were much bigger than human rights for the intervening state. At the end of World War I, the

League of Nations, realizing the Humanitarian Intervention failed to be a one-policy act,

restricted all use of force into a sovereign state, and instead would use treaty regulations for

resolutions (DeWall & Omaar, 2012).

Responsibility to Protect

What should be the proper response from the International Community when it comes to

intervention? Unfortunately, there is a failure for what constitutes the need of intervention and

even when those elements are agreed upon, states more often than not tend to lean towards non-

intervention and staying out of policies of other states. However, what happens when the

government of a sovereign state fails to protect its people, i.e., allows genocide to persist? Is it

not based on these criteria that intervention is deemed appropriate? Unfortunately it is not.

Humanitarian Intervention is such a controversial topic that states who are almost always willing

to intervene in the name of humanity have created an initiative called Responsibility to Protect or

R2P. Responsibility to Protect allows states, based on norm and certain established principles

amongst the involved states, to intervene in a state and regard sovereignty as a responsibility,


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thus a responsibility of the state to protect its citizens. Responsibility to Protect focuses on the

prevention of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and other forms

of human rights violations. The requirements of the norm are:

1. “States have a moral responsibility to protect their citizens at all costs.

2. The international community has the responsibility to aid any state unable to protect its citizens.

3. If all peaceful measures of intervention and crime prevention have failed, the

responsibility lies with the international community to intervene, through coercive

measures raging from economic sanctions to military force.” (Evans & Sahnoun, 2002,

p. 99).

Since many states cannot agree on what is acceptable under the Hunanitarian Intervention

Doctrine, Responsibility to Protect is another guide that is geared to protect humanity. Under

Responsibility to Protect, military force is to be used only as a last resort and only with the

approval of the Security Council, where at no point shall any state intervene on its own terms.

Responsibility to Protect, originally proposed by the International Commission on Intervention

and State Sovereignty of the Canadian government, was to offer solutions to the intervention

doctrine. However, the document still falls short of guiding individual states as to the

responsibility to protect and what each state interprets it to be. This document was to give the

United Nations the responsibility of deciding intervention, which it had in the past, but was

largely ignored when inconvenient for a member. Responsibility to Protect, is far more

advanced in its approaches as to when to intervene than the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine,

directing this researcher’s suggestion that it be taken into account and analyzed against the

doctrine itself, which may potentially lead to an overall solution the problem of intervention.


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Responsibility to Protect combined with Humanitarian Intervention

In the case of the former Yugoslavia, there was no consensus by the UN Security Council

in time to save the life of over one hundred thousand people. In the last few decades, both theory

and the practice of Humanitarian Intervention in domestic conflicts have raised many questions

as to the legitimacy of individual interventions. Humanitarian Intervention acquired prominence

with the intervention in Iraq in 1991 and later in the Yugoslavian country of Bosnia and

Herzegovina. The new doctrine was making a statement about domestic intervention into a

foreign country which in turn had not carried out any threats to any other country, but rather its

own people, where the government was in ethical conflict within or where groups were being

eliminated due to their religious practices, beliefs, race, or ethnicity. This doctrine declared that

in cases where a state was carrying out or sanctioning massive human rights violations, the

International Community had a right, even a duty, to intervene in support of the victims.

The change of the 1990’s brought an increasing debate that sparked the “right” to

intervention based on humanitarian aid. While some states recognized the need for intervention

for perpetrators of human violence, others were slow to military action in a foreign land based

upon violations of human rights, per the Declaration of Human Rights. Some questioned the

motive that the interventions were not that of saving lives, but that of self-interest, and the more

powerful states, mainly those of the West, were intervening in order to secure personal interests

(Coady, 2002). While the question arises whether intervention was on behalf of humanity or

self-interest, it is precisely that that sparks debate, the problem with motive for intervention

being that of self-interest, is that it cannot always be proven, nor are states ready to admit to such

a thing, hence this potential underlining motive becomes reason for suspicion amongst states,

and results in a lack of consensus. The interventions in the 1990’s were not always consensual,


19

nor approved by the Security Council, therefore further complicating the dilemma of what should

be a proper guideline to follow when deciding to intervene. Thus far intervention had been

ultimately the decision of those states that deemed it important to speak up or intervene in the

name of humanity, disregarding skepticism of other states.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) intervention in Kosovo in 1999

constituted a turning point in interventions. This became the most controversial case thus far

because it was carried out without the authorization by the United Nations and because military

force had been carried out in the most difficult and unreliable way imaginable. Due to the

intervention in Kosovo, an agreement was ultimately reached, and United Nations Secretary

General Kofi Annan attempted to build a new consensus to reconcile the doctrine of sovereignty

with the protection of human rights (Goodman, 2006). The International Commission on

Intervention and State Sovereignty aimed to achieve Mr. Annan’s goal in 2001. The

international agenda on humanitarian intervention and human rights had moved on to a bigger

dilemma, “the war on terror” where President Bush of the United States had declared his agenda

for the Iraqi War and proceeded without the Council’s approval, further complicating the issue of

humanitarian intervention based on a consensus.

The post-Cold War era geared the international system towards international peace; all

policies, doctrines, and norms were created with this ideology in mind. The most important goal

in the mind of the United Nations was explicitly to stay away from new wars and to conclude

those already started. Unfortunately, this led to a drive in attention to assuredness that the

declaration of war was non-existent. This ensured the Security Council had the right to

determine the existence of any threat to peace and that with it the council had the sole authority

to determine what measures were to be taken and to what extent (Newman, 2009, pp. 17-22).


20

Even in the instance of self-defense, it was only in cases the Security Council determined

appropriate that it would be justified to carry out counter attacks, was intervention permissible. I

n principal, the removal of unilateral right to declare war constituted a transformation of the

inter-state system. However, as this was all laid out on paper with the United Nations, the

following years would prove the organization unable to operate effectively and enforce set goals.

In some cases, the United Nations was completely ignored, where countries made their own

decisions to intervene or declare war based off of personal interests. In other cases, such as the

Korean War, the United States manipulated and coerced the Council to support military action,

which was in reality a United States led coalition (Newman, 2009, p. 288).

In many of the cases for intervention, state sovereignty supported non-intervention.

Sovereignty, in principal, is a multi-dimensional concept which is an ambiguous and theoretical

topic. There is no single agreement on state sovereignty, specifically because its substance is

quite difficult to define. The claim of possession of sovereignty has been extremely powerful in

justifying state policy whether democratic or rational for centralized dictatorships, whether for

liberation against external domination, or for aggression against other peoples, every state uses it

in conjunction to their own interests and their own conveniences (Newman, 2009, p. 170).

The counterpart of sovereignty has been non-intervention. United Nations Charter

Article Two stressed the importance of non-intervention and state sovereignty. If we take

sovereignty into account in order to justify non-intervention or to make it into an argument that

there cannot be such a thing as intervention for humanitarian reasons due to State Sovereignty

and the protection it holds in international law it creates a dilemma. There is a failure to

acknowledge that at such a time period when State Sovereignty was established, many post war

era European empires dominated much of the world and held control over millions of people by


21

their metropolitan centers of power. The claim that sovereignty applied equally to all states was

therefore maintained only by the actual denial of statehood to the majority of nations, with a few

key nations holding all power, allowing the right of war against the peoples of their own

territories created no invasion into state sovereignty whatsoever (Raic, 2002, p. 219).

State Sovereignty was enforced more profoundly at the conclusion of the Second World

War when new international laws came to play a vital role in securing sovereignty. International

law was set to show that states were not inviolable and that they were entitled to state

sovereignty, but the International Community could in fact, as it did with the Nazi perpetrators as

well as Japanese, put people, war criminals to be exact, on trial for crimes committed against

humanity (Newman, 2009, p. 186). In this way international law showed that sovereignty was

not an absolute and that it could be punctured. The Declaration set forth in December following

the Second World War stated:

“A common standard for achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end

that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this declaration

constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for

these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international,

to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the

peoples of member states themselves and among the peoples of territories under

their jurisdiction” (Assembly, 1948).

This research tends to demonstrate that the need for reform within International Law and

enforcement policies is a must. The research shows that there is evidence that suggests the

problem lies within all three doctrines; International Law, Humanitarian Intervention, and the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The problem this research has addressed is not what


22

these documents are, but in fact how enforceable they are. International Law only exists in the

sense that states who want to follow it and acknowledge its existence create an adhered to law. It

neither interprets laws beyond state sovereignty nor acknowledges the existence of such laws, yet

it aims to provide a basis where law on the international level is in existence (Barash & Webel,

2009). This is contradictory and poses several problems if international law is to be recognized

and adhered to; state sovereignty is limited, rather than the ultimate law. Furthermore,

international law, with its strict stance on state sovereignty, opens up the never ending debate of

intervention, while intervention for humane reasons is acceptable per the Declaration of Human

Rights; it is interpreted by International Law Standards and skeptics of Humanitarian

Intervention as illegal (Adjei, 2005).

The research also concludes that there is no problem with wanting The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights to be upheld amongs the member states However, universality

would require each and every member state to agree to what these human rights mean, thus

making it impossible for everyone to agree on such an issue. There is a failure of recognizing

that the existence of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not dependent on the

definition of those rights. There is a need to acknowledge that human rights by nature are

complex and beliefs of those rights vary greatly amongst people of the same state, culture, etc.,

but if the International Community stands to uphold the rules of the Declaration of Human

Rights, these differences have to be taken into account.

If we continue to utilize the social-constructed perspective in arguing why we cannot

intervene in one particular state because their cultural practices are different than that of alternate

states, intervention would be unacceptable, because it would be an imposition of values and

ideologies not shared by the original state. Or if we take the neorealist versus the neoliberal


23

approach, the neorealist would argue that it is not possible to intervene because the alternate

states’ interests have no bearing on what is happening in their interest state. Alternately, the

neoliberal perspective would argue for intervention as all members of the International

Community are inclined and responsible to protect their neighbors regardless of interest. The

latter perspective may be the one that holds the most weight, however not for the reasons

expressed, but for intervention based on belief, which is bound to raise questions and spark

arguments. Therefore, the best option is to find a middle ground. For the most part there will

never be a middle ground, or at least it’s unlikely at this time, however, intervention or non-

intervention should not be dependent on any single viewpoint, but dependent upon fact. The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights was put in place by the member states of the United

Nations, so why are those same states questioning intervention, when such intervention is for

those very reasons they aim to address in the declaration? It is human nature to argue and

question, however if we are going to argue and question then let us question intervention as to

how it should be implemented, rather than “why” it should be implemented. The “why” here is

what is keeping us from the next step of conforming to a set of rules that guides intervention.

This prescription is not ideal as it has its disadvantages and questions, admittedly, but humanity

needs to move past the point of interpretation, as this research will outline there are several

dozen interpretations for the human rights doctrine, international law, and humanitarian

intervention. What is necessary is to focus on the part that will either move towards intervention

or make the judgment against intervention.

The problem remains in that everything is interpretable in countless ways, but too much

focus on interpretation and the motive for intervention leaves the International Community in a

never ending circle of debate that it must free itself from, or cease to exist all together. There is


24

no question of recognition for organizations such as the United Nations, but unless such an

organization is entitled with enforceable powers, any move it makes is going to be shut down by

some greater state or another higher power. The dilemma is, entitling the United Nations with

enforcement powers or not. This dilemma is not an easy one to solve and giving the organization

such enforcement powers, does not guarantee employment of such powers as every state deems

fit, creating further argumentation. There is no simple way to approach the topic of intervention,

there are countless options, none of which are solid enough to avoid debate, yet this researcher

proposes a look into them. First, international law needs reform, as the world has evolved to a

point that the general standards set in place after the Second World War are no longer valid for

the current world order. Second, there needs to be a very close look at the possibility of setting

up a world government in charge of handling domestic disputes of human rights violations, as

well as threats to sovereign rights of states. This task is daunting as there is a debate as to who

this world government, should be and what it should be allowed to govern. The proposition

could be a similar model to the United States Congress, where representatives of all member

states would be elected officials of such world government, representing all states equally

without bias. This would in turn eliminate the question as to “who” should intervene, as all

states would have a designated part in this new governmental organization (Barash & Webel,

2009). The other problem with a world government is this danger of oppression. To some, the

prospect of a world government results in the fear of being deprived of civil liberties, that they

would not be able to move about freely in their own territories but would be subject to

government raids at any given time without so much as a warning (Barash & Webel, 2009).

There are many questions arising as to the validity of such a government, but as has been seen in

the past, Africa becoming a democratic country, the Soviet Union dissolving and with it the Cold


25

War; the world is changing and what once was thought impossible, can very well be possible

within the next few decades. As intimidating as the idea of a world government is, it is

important to acknowledge that more than likely states would feel obligated to follow the rules of

such government, given that there is some balance between powers and what this would

government could and could not control (Barash & Webel, 2009). Third, if human rights are

sustainable and are to be protected, then this issue needs to be taken out of the domestic

jurisdiction of states and fall under international jurisdiction. This means all human rights issues,

as hard as this is to picture at the present time, the reality seems to be that the more options any

one state has the more debate arises. If some human rights are allowed to be dealt with

domestically while others are not, this creates legal loopholes that spark debate and the

opportunity to brush the issue of as not being of global importance.

There are significant limitations with this study, for one, getting states to agree and listen

to such a proposal will be extremely difficult and even impossible at this moment in time, as

most states are too overly preoccupied with their own dilemmas of the global recession to be

concerned with human rights and international law reforms. Furthermore, such research requires

international participation, which due to the limited scope and time period of this research, is

rather unachievable. Further limitations exist in direct interviews with state officials on behalf of

their domestic policies on human rights, if such exist at all. To obtain such data again the scope

of this research is limiting. The inconclusiveness on available data on such topics as possible

corporation and a possibility into a world government, limit the research in critically analyzing

those findings. The proposition exists to further aim and address this topic through research and

collection of data which would allow for a complete analysis of what states expect from such a

world order, and if they are in agreement with such an order. Since the research time for this


26

topic was limiting, a look into international law reform cannot be conclusively evaluated at this

time, such research is limited in financial assets as well as geographical limitations.

Chapter II

Historical Literature Review: International Law and the Responsibility to Protect

The changes of the post Second World War era have led to an increased debate on

Humanitarian Intervention where some believe that the new law on intervention signified a new

international conviction that was to prevent unnecessary human suffrage of the world, but would

yet sustain the ideology of a sovereign state. Still others interpreted this transformation as an

attempt by the powers of the West to recreate their state norms, to further colonize and

undermine smaller, weaker state authority. Interventions were questionable and took place in

several places around the world post-Cold War era. However, it was not until Kosovo that the

world turned around and decided to take a much closer look at intervention as a whole. In

Kosovo’s intervention case, although originally planned to be approved by the Security Council,

was far from being approved by the Council, yet the North Atlantic Treaty Organization still

intervened (Hadzic, 2008).

The fact that members of the United Nations were ready to admit that there was the

existence of human rights did not mean that they acknowledged human rights in the same form,

or that State Sovereignty as the fundamental principle of the International System would have

limits when it came to intervention based on those rights (Newman, 2009, p. 15). The states that

composed the United Nations were bodies that were supposed to protect rights of their citizens

and should they fail to do so, international bodies would threaten their powers with intervention,


27

but this was holding very limited enforcement powers. There was disagreement about the most

important rights of humanity; the capitalist states emphasized civil and political rights, while

communist states emphasized socioeconomic rights. The actual discussion on human rights was

dependent on mutual recrimination and propaganda, an agreement between member states could

not be formed based on what those rights should actually emphasize (Newman, 2009). To make

things even more complicated on the human rights stance, the controversy and tension that was

already present between the doctrine of human rights and state sovereignty caused people to

translate “rights” in their favor and would come to rebel and question legitimacy of the state

which would deny them those rights. With this, people came to see a fall of their own states.

The United States began emphasizing the importance of human rights in their foreign policies,

demanding states that needed the assistance from the United States would have to comply with

certain human rights concerns before the United States would be willing to offer any aid. Even

the former Soviet Union decided to accept the Helsinki Accord of 1975, also known as the

Helsinki Declaration were enacted and signed by thirty-five states, including all European States,

United States, and Canada in order to improve relations between the Communist block and the

Western world (D'Amato, 1997). The Helsinki Accord mandated that “all states had sovereign

equality, refrained from the use of force, maintained the territorial integrity of other states, settle

disputes peacefully, would not intervene in domestic affairs, and would respect human rights and

fundamental freedoms given to any born human being including; life, liberty, and religion” (D’

Amato, 1997, p. 136). Hence, at this time, no one acknowledged the threat of human rights to

the non-intervention norm.

Non-intervention was questioned from the laws derived after the Nazi regimen collapsed

after the Second World War, the 1948 Genocide Convention declared Resolution 96 (I) on


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December 11, 1946, which stated that genocide was a crime punishable by international law and

that this action was condemned by the United Nations and the civilized world as a whole

(Peterson, 2011). The United Nations definition of genocide is as follows:

“Article I: The contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time

of war, is a crime under international law, which they undertake to prevent and punish.

Article II: In the Present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to

destroy, in a whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial, or religious group such as:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical

destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” (Assembly T. U., 1948).

Although the Genocide Convention was a major development in setting groundwork as to what

constituted genocide and allowed for intervention, it still excluded groups such as political or

military, and did not touch on the subject of ethnic cleansing (Newman, 2009, pp. 345-380)

The Genocide Convention did very little to establish the difference between state sovereignty

and intervention, it seemed to be both for and against it at the same time. The initial discussion

was that the Convention would bring world order and that genocide should become the universal

reason for intervention. Genocide would fall under universal jurisdiction and outside states

would have the responsibility and the right to intervene when it was in question. However, there

were discussions which specified other reasons, not just genocide, when it came to intervention

such as the conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public indictment to commit, attempting

to commit, and complicity in genocide (Janssen, 2008). This way a strict emphasis was placed


29

on preventing the crime and apprehending the violators in the most effective ways, before

genocide was to occur. In this way intervention would be justified if the international

community had the belief that any of the following acts were being put in play, hence it could

intervene; however, we have seen that more often than not these acts or attempts to act are vastly

difficult to prove (Newman, 2009, p. 356).

Intervention Against Law

In his evaluations on Peacekeeping operations Mitchell Ocran (2002) questions the effectiveness

of international legal norms against military force and furthermore raises the issue of balance

between Humanitarian Intervention and sovereignty. In the 1970s, many instances of

humanitarian intervention have brought the issue to the forefront of international law discourse

and debate. The 1990s sparked intervention debates when cases of intervention occurred in

Liberia, Rwanda, Somalia, and the former countries of Yugoslavia. Although almost all of the

interventions were controversial in approval, the case in Yugoslavia may have been the most

confusing to date. The intervention involved the attempt to securitize and create international

peace, as the countries of the collective Yugoslavia aimed to gain independence for themselves.

While the added twist of human rights violations caused a humanitarian crisis in the conflict of

Yugoslavia. This conflict turned into a twofold mission for the International Community, with

the need for humanitarian intervention on one side and the need to maintain international peace

per United Nations Article 73.b Chapter 7 ,maintaining territorial integrity and promoting peace

and international security, which the newly independence seeking republics were threatening

(Gibbs, 2009).

The doctrine and manifestation of Humanitarian Intervention have remained highly

controversial over the centuries. Whether it was to be carried out in an individual state against


30

state measure or that of a collective enforcement, there have always been condemnations and

commendations of those interventions. This debate is even more controversial in today’s time.

Many do not question the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but its

implementation. Michael Hirsh pointed out that humanitarian intervention was partially a

“phony debate” in which he explained his concern over the role which the United States and the

United Nations played when it came to peacekeeping operations. Furthermore, his concern lay

in the fact that the primary executers of the doctrine would be the sole deciding factors of

implementation (Hirsh, 2003). Other scholars take humanitarian intervention as violating, and

vow non-intervention even when it comes to greater tragedies such as those of the Balkans

during the 1990’s. To those who favor non-intervention, the logic of war is purely played out in

letting the war burn itself out. In other words, let those victims and parties to the war fend for

themselves, somewhat of a Darwinian perspective, where those who stand last will ultimately

have won the war. This may not sit well with the majority of the global economy, but from a

neorealist perspective it is purely acceptable.

“It might be best for all parties to let minor wars burn themselves out….Policy elites

should actively resist the emotional impulse to intervene in other people’s wars—not because

they are indifferent to human suffering, but precisely because they care about it….” (Luttwak,

1999, p. 37).

The idea of Luttwak (1999) was that wars will inevitably burn themselves out and it would be to

the benefit of everyone around those wars to let them be, thus serving their interest in the long

run. The problem further lies in the fact that those wars referred to here are not wars between

states but wars within a state, such as the Balkan wars. In these instances, a realist perspective,

such as that of Luttwak, would ultimately argue that the overall community should let it play out


31

the way it ought to play out and not meddle in the conflict (Wohlforth, 2008). However, the

entirety of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights goes against such thinking because it

takes a neoliberal perspective on intervention. While the neoliberalist stance would not question

state sovereignty, but simply acknowledge it as existing so long as each state is willing to help

their neighbor out in case of conflict, then intervention on behalf of human rights should take

place and wars are not to be left unresolved, nor should the weak be left to the mercy of those

they are fighting against thus intervention into any conflict would be justified under such view.

The list on controversy and views on what should constitute intervention is endless at this

point, thus the only consensus that was reached on the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine was

the existence of intervention. The limits of intervention based on human rights are controversial

explicitly because there is no single view as to what those rights exactly are, nor is there an

enforcement mechanism that the United Nations has in order to force member states to intervene

in those who are in violation of those rights.

There is the argument that a cross-cultural consensus, no matter why it was reached as

long as it was reached when deciding to intervene, would be sufficient to justify a particular

intervention. Jacques Maritain made the statement in regard to The Universal Declaration on

Human Rights that violently opposed ideologies could surprisingly agree upon rights but with

the condition that no one asks why they did so (Kao, 2010, p.78). While shedding light onto the

lack of actual consensus between states when it comes to intervention, it also raises a curtail

point; if all member states have already agreed on The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

then why is there no agreement on guidelines for intervention? While the Maritain approach to

human rights gives the most insights to today’s controversy, most human rights issues follow a

more political principle of justice or an overlapping consensus in the matter. For instance, it is


32

more so encouraged by scholars such as Joseph Chan for states to justify human rights on their

own terms and perspectives in hope that such an overlapping consensus could actually emerge

(Kao, 2010).With this the hope is that most states will gain understanding of what human rights

are from their perspective and that they will reach a compromise or common ground when

intervention is at question. This theory is largely up to interpretation itself, for there is still no

actual consensus on what constitutes a justification for intervention. Different groups, states,

cultures, religions, and civilizations, although holding incompatible fundamental views on

theology, metaphysics, human nature, and so on, would come to an agreement on certain norms

that ought to govern human behavior. Each would in turn have its own way of justifying this

from out of its profound background cultural conceptions. The agreement would be on the

norms, while still the disagreement would lie in why they were the right norms and we would be

content to live in this consensus, undisturbed by the differences of profound underlining belief.

Essentially the importance lies in the agreement not as to why and how the agreement

was reached, but would it be possible to agree to a guideline for intervention, regardless of why

each member state agrees to these guidelines? If so, such guidelines could be composed to state

that reasons for intervention are genocide, torture, famine, and any other right outlined in the

declaration. These guidelines would make it possible to intervene if any right outlined in the

declaration is violated and no other state would be able to raise havoc against such intervention

as long as it follows these guidelines (Kao, 2010).

Consensus may be the one issue that needs to be taken into account when understanding

why it are that there are interventions in some states while others are in fact left to fend for

themselves. If everything is interest driven, such as the neorealist claims it should be, then there

should be a consensus on non-intervention. Whether the stance is liberalist or neorealist, the


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issue is consensus rather than individual rights. John Rawls’ (1975) Theory of Justice would

argue that a politically liberal society could justifiably prohibit slavery while promoting the legal

equality of all citizens as long as it refrained from taking an official stand on the metaphysical

question of the real or equal moral worth of all would-be slaves in relation to their would-be

masters. In other words, one can make a stance on their own perspective of why a practice is

morally wrong but cannot impose such a stance on another (Kao, 2010, p. 68) While Rawls’ was

arguing the moral equality between citizens of one society, and their given rights thereof,

Rawlsian-influenced politicians aimed to justify this aspect as applicable to the world as a whole.

In their claim, universally one could make the claim just as Rawls did within a society, that

certain rights should in fact be universally applicable (Kao, 2010).

Whether Rawls would actually agree with his work being applicable to universal human

rights or not is a different question. Regardless, the acknowledgement should be made that there

are at least two ways of conceptualizing what a two tiered approach to human rights would

produce. First, the world community would attempt to generate a brand new list of such

universally valid human rights standards while it still would allow each state to justify the results

of such a consensus idiosyncratically. Second, the world community would presume that current

international human rights law already represent such a sustainable consensus on universally

enforceable standards of conduct and thus would use this approach as a way to legitimate plural

foundations for human rights.

The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 made clear establishments to the principle of

sovereignty and put an end to the thirty-year war with an end to the destructive European wars

over religion and territory (Fitzpatric, 2005). The principle of non-interference in another state

became commonly practiced and widely condemned when breached. However, sovereignty in


34

itself, due to a constant change brought upon by wars after the Treaty of Westphalia, came to

lose much of its original absoluteness, and the formation of the United Nations, while limiting in

power but seen as a reflection of its member state guided what states could and could not do, in

order to be proclaimed responsible citizens of the world.

Peacekeeping Measures

When it comes to intervention, the United Nations has shown a greater need to use

peacekeeping enforcements over intervention itself, in order to prevent or make human rights

violations visible. Peacekeeping is often used alongside other forms of United Nations

involvement in military and political crisis around the world; peacekeeping missions are so

called preventers of war. Peacekeeping missions are employed before any military invasion is

granted, and as in the case in Darfur, these missions make the final judgment on whether the

violation against any given citizen justifies intervention or not. For a peacekeeping mission to

take place, the first measure is peace enforcement, outlined under Chapter Seven of the United

Nations Charter. This measure involves the use of force in order to pursue an agreed end.

Second, there is the strategy of peace making where the active involvement of the United

Nations is in search of a peaceful mediation or settlement (Mayall, 2007, pp. 59-94).

Additionally, the post-conflict peace building measure is employed which is the action of

identifying and supporting new strategic designs that strengthen and consolidate peace. The last

measure is often started before the resolution of any conflict in order to hasten the road to peace.

The undertaking of the last stage of peace building further assists the country in mine clearing,

reestablishment of living for refugees, and disarmament (Ocran, 2002).

Peacekeeping measures do not always favorably aid those countries in conflict. This case

is best demonstrated in that of the Balkan region in the early 1990’s when both Bosnia and


35

Croatia were under the siege of Serbian militia. While the peacekeeping mandate in Bosnia had

some enforcement aspects, it was not considered a peacekeeping operation. The warring parties

lacked consent to any third party for intervention, thus making the interventionists assume a

hostile position to the environment and arming themselves for combat instead of humanitarian

aid. Traditional peacekeeping methods are methods of intervention themselves and are prone to

escalate in hostile military combat, which at times the peacekeeping party is not ready to face,

and at other times lacks approval by the Security Council (Ocran, 2002).

Peacekeeping measures are often employed in containment of civil wars and crises

involving the threat to peace on both the international as well as the domestic scale. As defined

by John Gerard Ruggie (1993):

“Peacekeeping essentially attempts to overcome a coordination problem between the two

adversaries: the peacekeeper seeks to ensure that both parties to a conflict understand the

agreed upon rules of the game and that compliance with or deviation from these rules is

made transparent” (p. 29).

“Enforcement, on the other hand, is akin to a game of chicken: the international

community, through escalating measures that threaten war-making and military defeat,

attempts to force an aggressor off its track. Strategically, the United Nation’s new

domain resembles a persuasion game, because there is no clear cut aggressor U.N. forces,

by presenting a credible military threat, seek to convince all conflicting parties that

violence will not succeed. International force is brought to bear, not to defeat, but to

neutralize the local forces. The military objective of the strategy is then to deter,

dissuade, and deny” (p. 38).


36

Peacekeeping, unlike direct intervention, is more focused on aiding humanitarian assistance such

as food, medical supplies, and strategies of peace to the warring parties in an attempt to

overcome their differences. Unlike intervention, peacekeeping is a less controversial issue

because it only allows the commanders of such missions to use force in the event of hostile

attempts by either of the warring parties. Peacekeeping operations could be viewed as spies to

the international community as to what is happening on warring territory. More often than not,

those missions are asked to retreat once supplies have been delivered to the citizens.

Peacekeeping operations do not attempt to force resolution between the parties, but in contrast,

reach a medium for a solution. In such cases where these operations are doomed to fail,

peacekeeping missions either present a limited amount of supplies, or simply no cooperation by

either side, the peacekeepers retreat, leaving the war to take its course (Ocran, 2002).

In the case of the Balkan region, peacekeeping operations fail more often than not. In

Bosnia all sides of the conflict including Bosnian Muslims as well as Bosnian Serbs were

involved in frequent obstruction of the convoys employed by the United Nations Protective

Force (UNPROFOR) and the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR),

which were attempting to make their way to the population via Croatian ports and cities in

United Nations’ designated safe areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Due to the frequent attacks

on these convoys, the task of delivering humanitarian aid to the population became

unmanageable and the United Nations, under Chapter Seven of its Charter, established a peace

enforcement unit composed of North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states. This

composition was rather unusual, and followed a severely confusing chain of command. What

exactly this peace enforcement unit was to accomplish was questionable, where every move

depended on more than one party, leading to confusion and a tragic result in the country this unit


37

was to protect (Mayall, 2007). In such an event as the Balkans, the attempt to stop atrocities,

genocide, and mass killings through methods of such traditional peacekeeping becomes almost

useless, as demonstrated earlier, the convoys are attacked, and peacekeepers are endangered, all

while the use of force is non-permissible or approved by the Security Council. In such events as

the case in Bosnia, the use of traditional peacekeeping methods becomes inapplicable and as this

research will demonstrate later in the case study of the Balkans, the inability to use force to stop

mass killings until later could be explained through forcible humanitarian intervention. Had such

intervention taken place at once without the hesitation of approval from the Security Council,

one will never know how many lives could have been spared, and thus the war may have

concluded at a much earlier time.

As previously defined, humanitarian intervention through the eyes of the United Nations,

has been defined as the “justifiable use of force for the purpose of protecting the inhabitants of

another state from treatment so arbitrary and persistently abusive that it exceeds the limits within

which the sovereign is presumed to act with reason and justice” (Benjamin, 1992). Humanitarian

intervention was defined by International Law as “dictatorial interference by a state in the affairs

of another state for the purpose of maintaining or ordering the actual conditions of things”

(Oppenheim, 1955, p. 305). Intervention in itself is definable in many ways, the peacekeeping

operations are in a sense interventions of their own, and then there are vast forms of intervention

including material assistance through relief, aid, or sanctions. Whether intervention is economic

or not consist of coercive tactics to force corporation and as a last resort the dispatch of military

forces to remedy massive human atrocities. The latter being the most controversially challenged

and debated. Peacekeeping measures, sanctions, or humanitarian aid are never questioned as

violating sovereignty rights or International Law as much as military force is to stop mass


38

killings. The acts that are considered as “acts that shock the conscience of mankind” are acts that

have fallen under the questionability of Humanitarian Intervention by force such as genocide,

ethnic cleansing, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and any other crime resulting in the mass

loss of life (Carter, 2009, p. 13). Secondly, military intervention could be employed if there is an

interference with the delivery of humanitarian aid to the population or there is a collapse of civil

order entailing substantial loss of life. In the latter situation, it becomes impossible to identify

any responsible authority to the crime, only that chaos is persistent, and mass loss of life is

occurring, while the government of such state is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens. This

author will explore this case in the current crisis involving Syria. In such instance, according to

the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine, it is the international community’s responsibility to act

and bring a resolution to help restore peace and order (Carter, 2009, p. 556). The situation in

Syria is a chain reaction to a long line of internal conflicts arising in the Arab world. In mid-

December of 2010 many Middle Eastern Arabs revolted against their governments, civil

uprisings began in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon,

Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria (Manhire, 2012). Currently Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya

have overthrown the old regimen and began elections democratically. The North Atlantic Treaty

Organization, engaged in airstrikes in an attempt to oust the Libyan dictator as a form of

intervention in 2011 (Manhire, 2012). Reluctantly there is no direct intervention into Syria,

which seems to be the worst off, there is an ongoing internal conflict between the government

and the revolutionists has caused skyrocketing death tools to both combats and civilians. While

the Arab League and the United Nations are warning with sanctions, the Syrian government

continues to ignore these to present day, meanwhile the International Community is reluctant to

send in troops of its own, for the questions of intervention is debatable amongst the member


39

states (Peters, 2012). While the debate is still high as to whether or not to intervene in Syria and

if so who will do it, countless of innocent lives are being lost, if there was a consensus as to

when and who will intervene, then Syria may not be an ongoing debate today (Masud, 2012).

Humanitarian Intervention can be carried out by one single state, where more often than

not it is a powerful state such as the United States. Sometimes this intervention is carried out by

a group of willing states; it can be unilateral in the sense that intervention lacks any formal

consent by the United Nations Security Council, or any other international governing body. This

diversity in intervention creates problems when no state within such governing body wants to

agree on whether to intervene or not based on human rights violations.

To further complicate things of intervention, the problem lies in that Humanitarian

Intervention according to international law was never acknowledged as having any positive

correlation to law in the international realm. The only way to justify intervention would be to

break international law in its initial attempt, such as intervention without the consent of the

Security Council, and only through succession of the attempted mission would it be justified.

One cannot simply know if the intervention will be successful, unless they break international

law and by doing so, could possibly face charges based on war crimes. The arguments for and

against humanitarian intervention largely lie in the unattainable agreement due to vast

differences within the international community alone. Pradier-Fodere made the following

statement against intervention, which largely resembles much of why consensus thus far is

unattainable:

“The acts of inhumanity, however condemnable they may be, as long as they did not

affect nor threaten the right of other states, do not provide the latter with a basis for

lawful intervention as no state can stand up in judgment of the conduct of others; as long


40

as they do not infringe upon the rights of other powers or of their subjects they remain the

sole business of the nationals of the countries where they are committed” (De Wall &

Omaar, 2012 ).

In other words, unless these practices undermine an outside state and threaten global peace, then

there is no need for intervention. Other arguments lie in that the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights was explicitly establish to guarantee all human beings those outlined rights,

regardless of what state they fall under, however, consensus amongst those states who

acknowledge the existence of this treaty is lacking when the question of intervention arises.

Would it not simply mean that this document would guide the practice of human rights

throughout the world? It does not and as the case in Balkans will demonstrate, there is a great

need for reform of the document itself in order to clarify what each human right or specific

human rights mean to each member of the International Community.

The historical case study of Yugoslavia is somewhat of a double standard when looking

at intervention, as mentioned before, there seemed to be a threat to the International Community

in that the former countries of Yugoslavia were desperately seeking independence from the

republic, with an additional aspect of human rights violations, per the human rights declaration,

due to Serb militia engaging in mass murders of Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovo Albanians

citizens. However, even this war, such as several before, sparked international concerns over

who, when, what, and where intervention should take place. The importance here is to make the

distinction between the acknowledgement of human rights and its practice. Without a doubt,

every member of the International Community is aware of the existence of The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights, its interpretation and application when there is a concern of

human rights violations is altogether a different story.


41

Challenges of Humanitarian Intervention

The number of internal conflicts has largely escalated since the 1990’s leading to a great

number of interventions due to the infringement on human rights. Since the 1990’s, there have

been over seventeen interventions including those of the Balkans, northern and southern Iraq,

East Timor, and Somalia, most, but not all, of which were effective in either halting or

preventing further crimes against humanity and genocide. The ineffective cases were comprised

of one of two reasons for their lack of success, either the conflict resumed after the aiding powers

had deployed or the conflict war left unresolved due to nonintervention. Many who desperately

required and cried for intervention were left unattended such as the Republic of Congo, Georgia,

Moldova, Chechnya, and Uganda. Uganda only recently became a concern when Joseph Kony

was exposed. In the cases where intervention took place, whether successful or not, most lacked

approval by the International Community, in fact, there has been rare consensus on intervention

throughout the community in general when intervention was in question.

As Kao (2010) emphasizes, the problem lies not in recognizing the existence of human

rights regardless of what the belief on each human right is, but that there should be consensus on

justification for human rights. The reasons as to why rights such as life are in existence lie not in

defining life in each and every nation’s perspective, the underlining fact is that the right to life

has been acknowledged as a universal right, but in how we individually look at life is a different

matter. If the agreement has been made that such right is in existence, no matter from what

perspective, the agreement could be reached as to why such a right needs protection. The

argument can conclude that The Universal Declaration on Human Rights is not universal in the

sense that each right is interpreted with the same meaning, but is in fact universal in the sense

that the acknowledgement to the existence of such right is there. Could the International


42

Community finally agree on guidelines that need to be put in place in order to reaffirm if a

violation of the right to life in general has taken place, then there is a need for action

immediately and thus the violating government or state forfeits their protection of state

sovereignty. Of course, this is not possible without coming to a consensus that human rights

should fall under international jurisdiction rather than state, and if so, how many states would

actually agree on such reform? This research is limited due to lack of available current resources

that would support answers to such questions. While the current available resources form an

excellent interpretation on what humanitarian intervention is and how it pertains to The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is the significant lack of available information as

to why, other than lack of agreement, intervention is so controversial. It is this researcher’s

viewpoint that if the consensus could be reached on why we have an outline of rights in the first

place, then there could be the possibility that another reform of the document or of international

law would grant the international governing bodies, such as the United Nations, enforcement

powers in order to stop such atrocities and therefore have a plan of action in future interventions,

if necessary. Further arguments arise as to whom in fact should do the intervening in the first

place. If we leave the decision up to the United Nations, misconceptions and misguidance as to

why intervention is taking palace will be placed on those states actually agreeing to the

intervention by those who are opposed to it. Since there is no international military to govern

such intervention, the blame is placed on the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization, and whatever other government led the intervention.

Currently there are three major problems with intervention as it is outlined in The

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. First, the Responsibility to Protect norm was not

implemented in International Law and in international organizations, but was rather composed of


43

an independent group of states who deemed intervention appropriate from their own contextual

bias and reasoning. Second, the problem of duty allocation with intervention is arguably the

most crucial problem after the decision is made to intervene, given the International Community

and the United Nations Security Council may reach a consensus on an intervention, the issue of

enforcement remains. Who will send their military resources into combat when their own

interests aren’t threatened at all? This poses the question if there are designated bodies for

intervention, how much is each state responsible to contribute to such an intervention? Lastly

what needs to be done if a member state of the Security Council decides to veto an intervention

for cynical reasons (i.e. their interests are not at stake, so why employ their own resources to aid

another?). These questions lead to another look into Responsibility to Protect, or morality of

states. If in fact International Law would constitute Responsibility to Protect in order to guide

the decision-making process of intervention, there is a significant chance that intervention would

come much quicker and lives would be spared (Janssen, Humanitarian Intervention and the

Prevention of Genocide , 2008, pp. 298-206). Unfortunately, as the stance is today, there is no

single interpretation to intervention or to human rights in general. The Responsibility to Protect

lies in each states own willingness to participate in the norm, when and how they chose to do so.

Consensus as to what constitutes genocide has yet to be determined, since everything else is open

to interpretation to each individual state based upon their constructed beliefs as to what life in

general is, an agreement to intervene would constitute an agreement on what life or genocide is.

It is in this researcher’s belief that it does not have to be so in order to agree that intervention is

necessary.

With this in mind, it is important to take a look at this responsibility to protect and to

incorporate it into international law as a reform. While many may argue that the Humanitarian


44

Intervention Doctrine is sufficient to make such a decision of intervention, further examples,

such as Sudan in 2004 remains. In the case of Sudan, intervention was expected, but instead the

United Nations employed peacekeepers on a fact finding mission in order to conclude if the

actions constituted genocide or not. Genocide on the part of the perpetrator in this case could not

be proven but there was conclusive evidence of grave crimes against humanity occurred. The

latter findings could have constituted intervention on their own, without sufficient prove of

genocide, but in this case it was not what happened.

This example only further illustrates that the United Nations lacks sufficient power or an

effective system of conflict prevention and enforcement of human security, as a matter of fact it

was the African Union in Darfur that was willing to set out on these peacekeeping missions to

begin with, but with its limited resources and means of execution, it was still dependent on the

United States and the European Union for major financial and logistics contributions, while the

United Nations stood back and watched the events play out. It is due to this lack of enforcements

that the condition in Darfur as well as in other countries such as Somalia, Congo, Northern

Uganda, and Myanmar failed to see any involvement by the international community.

The incorporation of Responsibility to Protect does not guarantee effective resolutions

nor agreements as to the time of intervention. However, it does create the need to take into

account the moral responsibility that lies within each state that acknowledged The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights. As such, it takes the responsibility away from the United Nations,

when intervention is in question, and thus intervention without the Security Council’s approval is

subject to punishment under international law. Many states may fail to recognize their moral

responsibility to aid others when they themselves could face war crime charges for such

attempts.


45

Once more the United Nations is in the spotlight as to whether such an agreement could

be made, that not individual states, but the International Community, abides by these norms of

morality, can that constitute enough for the United Nations to become the enforcer of such

interventions? Morality goes out of the realm of this research, but unfortunately it is also the

subject of interpretation by individual states, and therefore currently does not create a universal

stance on right versus wrong nor what is moral. Nevertheless, the aim of this research is simply

to explore the ideas, which will lead the international community closer to an agreement of if and

when intervention should take place.

Chapter III

The Case of the Balkans

One case that severely raised the questions of intervention based on human rights

violations was that of former Yugoslavia or what is also known as the area of the Balkans. The

case of the Balkans was that of severe controversies, for one, it not only caused states to fear

what the breakup of Yugoslavia would constitute for the international community, which was in

many ways a threat to security, but it was also a case for human rights. Due to the lack of

interpretation of what human rights are, and explicitly a consensus that would constitute

intervention, the call for help from countries such as Bosnia, Croatia, and lastly Kosovo

remained unanswered by the international community. This was in large due to unanticipated

danger the citizens of these states were about to face, and because no one knew what to do in

such a case. Neither outside government, United States nor any other state within the European


46

Community wanted to risk violating the laws of State Sovereignty, or any part of International

law, if it did not pertain to their own interests.

The history of the Balkan conflict is a very complicated one; the former Yugoslavia was

created from the ruins and collapse of two multiethnic empires, the Ottoman Empire and the

Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the conclusion of the First World War, both empires would end to

create the first Yugoslavia referred to as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (Petersen,

2011, p. 107). The first Yugoslavia was composed of three key elements: the former Austro-

Hungarian regions, the independent region of Serbia, and the regions to the south of Serbia. The

importance of history from the first Yugoslavia is impeccable in order to understand the conflict

in the collapse of the second Yugoslavia in the 1990s. These underlining issues were masked but

never resolved filled the population with rage and the need for vengeance against one another in

the former.

In the first Yugoslavia the conflict was divided in forms of subsystems, which were

unevenly distributed throughout the region of Yugoslavia. In both instances these two

subsystems experienced vastly different dynamics of the war as well as different types of

Western interventions. The Southern Subsystems adopted the Treaty of Berlin in 1878 after the

initial stages of decline of the Ottoman Empire recognized the independence of Serbia,

Montenegro, and Romania as well as the autonomy of Bulgaria. The Treaty transferred all

Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while the

province still largely remained under Ottoman control in practice (Burg & Berbaum, 1989). The

Austro –Hungarian empire would soon annex Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of their territory.

In a successful attempt to drive the Ottoman rulers out of their regions, Serbia, Montenegro,

Bulgaria, and Greece declared war on the Ottomans. For the Serbs, this was a chance to


47

incorporate territorial control for their ultimate goal, including gaining control of Kosovo, where

most of Serbia’s religious icons and sites remained. The rebellions of earlier times resulted in a

reinforcement of practices such as torching villages, killing, and displacement, therefore

punishment for such crimes was non-calculated as it was seen from the beginning as a way to

drive out the enemy and to regain access and control to valuable, resourceful lands. Leon

Trotsky described the atrocities taking place in Serbia as, “the Serbs in Old Serbia, in their

national endeavor to correct data in the ethnographical statistics that are not quite favorable to

them, are engaged quite simply in systematic extermination of the Muslim population”

(Malcom, Kosovo: A short History, 1999, p. 253). The Southern System was vastly different

from that of the Northern subsystem, it was born in violence with overtones of ethnic cleansing

and there were differences in languages amongst the antagonists where the Albanians were not of

Slavic origins, and many Slavs had no understanding of the Albanian language. Additionally,

the religious differences were more extensive. In the north subsystem Orthodox Christians were

facing off with Catholics, in the south the competition lay with the Muslims. To make matters

worse, the southern states were generally poorer than those of the north in resources and had

very weak cultural connections with Europe. This gave the northern states an advantage when

intervention was in question (Kocovic, 1985).

The northern states emerged with the final disappearance of Austro-Hungary at the

conclusion of the First World War. As previously mentioned the northern system was quite

different from the southern in many aspects, but the most crucial was its connection to the

European community. The northern groups were recognized in the same entity as the Serbs; the

Kingdom of Croats, and Slovenes. The Serbs being the predominant group amongst them. This

first Yugoslavia was an extension of the Serb state, for one-fifth of the Serb nation had perished


48

during the First World War. Due to this tragedy, the Serbs saw the state of Yugoslavia as

theirs and that this sacrifice which the Serb population endured was in fact what helped liberate

their neighboring Slovenes thus saving their lives. Hence, there was the expectance of some sort

of gratitude, as well as support for the liberalization to come in a form of allowing the Serbian

population to build their new state without interferences (Petersen, 2011, pp. 109-110).

Serbia dominated the first Yugoslavia and it was only natural to Serbs that the new

Kingdom of Yugoslavia fell under Serb control and a Serbian King. Holding drastic military

advantage and demographic dominance, it was easy for Serbia to seize control of the country’s

bureaucracy and military. The figures of Serb militia versus any of the other two northern states

were staggering on the evening of the Second World War. 165 Yugoslavian generals were

Serbs, two were Croats, and two were Slovenes. Furthermore, Serbs were dominant in that they

composed most of the military, where 1,300 out of 1,500 cadets were Serb. Senior functions in

the Premier’s cabinet were all held by Serb nationals. Serbs held 30 out of 31 positions in the

Royal Court, 113 out of 127 positions in the Ministry of the Interior, 180 out of 219 in the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 150 out of 156 in the Ministry of Education, 116 out of 137 in the

Justice Ministry, and 196 out of 200 in the State Mortgage Bank (Rothschild, 1974, p. 209).

Despite the knowledge and experience that the Slovenes and Croats brought with them from the

Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Serbs controlled all the levers of force and power during the

interwar period. Having been under the Austro-Hungarian Empire for so long, the Croats and

Slovenes were not ready to live as second-class citizens in their new state again.

The difference in the northern system was that it was always wealthier and more

developed than the south. The north did not rise due to ethnic cleansing and triumphalism.

Unlike the south, all its members spoke a similar Slavic language with barely any difference in


49

culture.. There was a religious difference in the northern system, not as drastic as Muslims and

Catholics in the south, but rather Orthodox Christians, the Serbs, and the Catholic Croats. The

interconnectedness culturally and geographically that the northern system had to the rest of the

European community would come to play a key role in the development of the Yugoslavian war

(Petersen, 2011).

Yugoslavia was forced to keep its elements under control from the onset. It was

composed of vastly different regions, not only different in resources and development, but

different culturally, the states within Yugoslavia had been under control by one empire or

another since the Byzantine times, and cries for autonomy were mounting. King Alexander, the

successor to the kingdom, denounced all religious and national symbols, such as Christian

Crosses. Serb and Croat religious symbols were not to have any connection to the government.

Both Serbs and Croats were to sustain their nationality but were to stay out of the government.

However, King Alexander’s reforms did not last and he was assassinated by the Ustasha, a

Croatian political terrorist organization that demanded recognition for Croatian autonomy. In an

attempt to calm things down, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, who took the Regency and became

Regent of Yugoslavia after his cousin King Alexander was assassinated, (Petersen, 2011)

recognized Croatian authority in an agreement called Sporazum. Roughly translated it means

“agreement,” which gave Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, the authority of budgetary and

administrative powers. However, this plan never was put in action as the Second World War

broke out and Yugoslavia witnessed horrendous killings. The figures were staggering at 1.7

million dead, which at that time was ten percent of the entire population (Kocovic, 1985, p. 54).

The Nazi regime fought to maintain their control over seized territories and get a hold on the

civil war at hand. The Ustasha, which mimicked the Nazi regime of Germany, would massacre


50

and commit brutal atrocities against the Serbs, which, in turn, the Serbs would recall in their war

against the Croats in the 1990’s. Finally Josip Broz, also referred to as Tito, came into power

and attempted to unify the country as a whole (Pond, 2006). Tito aimed to put to rest the ethnic

and national differences of the peoples of Yugoslavia. Tito himself was part Croat part Slovene

and would further attempt to balance the inequalities of wealth among the states within

Yugoslavia. However, instead of a decrease in the uneven gap of wealth between the two sub

regions, the gap became even larger. In order to end the ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia, Tito

resorted to both ruthless atrocities’ as well as measures of pacification. In the first months of the

new Regime an estimated 250,000 nationalists were killed in order to deter further conflict

(Malcom, Bosnia: A short History, 1994, p. 193). Second Tito’s regime would recognize the

aspiration for national recognition that was boiling within the states. In the forms of republics

he would establish six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, and

Montenegro. The Hungarian minority and the Kosovo Minority had lesser acknowledgement

and would have their needs met under the constitution of the Republic of Serbia in Voyvodina

(Petersen, 2011). After Tito’s death in 1980 the suppressed feelings between the states began to

show. Yugoslavia slowly began to unravel. With the country no longer able to reap its economic

and political benefits of a neutral state of the Cold War, the country came under pressure to pay

off its debts and adapt to the new realities of a decentralized government. Serbs, already at odds

with the wealthier states of Yugoslavia, continued to push towards recentralization. Their

ultimate goal was to once again reclaim control of the territories and fulfill their dream of a

Greater Serbia.

The Serbs took advantage of this period to bring up long suppressed grievances against

the other republics and now targeted Kosovo. For decades the Serbs stayed away from the topic


51

mainly because of the political intimidation from Tito’s regime. The Serbs had long thought that

Kosovo was not entitled to have autonomy nor did it entail the right to become a republic. In the

view of the Serbs autonomy was worse as it meant that Kosovo now had the power to veto

legislation, as did the other republics, while Serbia could not veto legislation and was sitting at a

lower legislation level than Kosovo. The Albanians were further pushing for autonomy to have

Kosovo declared a republic. Kosovo’s citizens were questioning why Montenegro had republic

status when it only had a population size of about half a million compared to Kosovo’s two

million (Petersen, 2011, pp. 114-115). Serbs would come to accuse Albanians of intimidating

and committing crimes against Serbs which were part of a master plan to commit genocide

against the Serb population. With despair, the Serbs continued to prove their case as the victims

of the Yugoslavian régime; claiming that for decades Tito was directing his policies explicitly at

Serbs, to wipe them out of the picture. They demanded, in a document sent by the Serbian

Academy of Science that Yugoslavia acknowledges the mistreatment of Kosovo-Serbs in these

territories. Failing to do so would constitute an act of treason with the intent to support genocide,

in the eyes of the Serbs.

Using Kosovo as his campaign booster, Slobodan Milosevic rose to power. He

established his image as the only defender of the Serb people. He defended all sacred rights of

the Serbs, and made claim that no one would defeat the Serb peoples. As the rest of Europe was

preparing for integration, Yugoslavia was well on a path of disintegration. Milosevic had taken

control of half of the federal units by the end of 1989 (Jovanovich, 2003). Milosevic could now

block any political initiatives of other actors. While both Croatia and Slovenia pushed for

decentralization, their act was no match for what Milosevic had in plan; recentralizing the state

into one Serb unit. Seeing as there was no point in fighting within the existing system, Slovenia


52

and Croatia began a process of withdrawal but the Serb government had other plans (Petersen,

2011).

No Western power could have predicted just how violent the Yugoslavian disintegration

would become. While the containment strategy against communism seemed to be working for

the European states of the West, the story in Yugoslavia was seen by the West as a success and a

middle way between communism and capitalism. Yugoslavia was not a threat in the eyes of the

Western world (Simic, 2009). Articles circulated claiming that on the ethnic level Yugoslavia

was a shared national political community. With “countless industrially skilled Yugoslavian

workers emigrating to the West for employment, and connections made with the West and a

relatively developed civil society, Yugoslavia seemed extremely poised and ready to withstand

and adapt to the changes brought upon with the collapse of communism” (Petersen, 2011, p.

119).

While the northern and central parts of Europe experienced a significantly peaceful

demise of communism, the southern part, mainly Yugoslavia, did not withstand such change

peacefully. The main problem was its demography. Serbs were spread throughout Yugoslavia

and held over half of the military and governmental functions of the state. Serbs, although a

minority in the republics, still composed significant numbers of the population. There were 11.5

percent in Croatia, 32 percent in Bosnia, and 13 percent in Kosovo (Petersen, 2011, p. 119). The

Serb minorities, had more resources and military power, with which they could easily produce

violence disproportionate to their population number. Along with the help of Serbia proper, they

had the capabilities to cause severe damage to the rest of the Yugoslavian republics. The

question that Serbs were asking within these territories was a simple one: “why should I be a

minority in your state, when you can be a minority in mine” (Petersen, 2011, p. 119). With this


53

mentality, Serbians aimed for their goal of a greater Serbia, in which all other minorities would

seize to exist. While Serbia was asking this question, the rest of the former Yugoslavian states

had other hopes and were considering separation. The hope of the rest of the Yugoslavian States

was that the Serbs would remain a minority in their respective territories because outside

intervention by the powerful states of the West would recognize the new states as independent

and legitimate. Hence Serbia would have little choice in the matter of their independence. For

the most part, the hope was that the imbalance of power within the state would cause the West to

create balance in favor of the other republics.

To make matters clear on the anticipation of intervention of the West into Yugoslavia, the

point should be established that the West had been a key factor in the initial stages of the

formation of Yugoslavia. Most of the Balkan states anticipated and calculated within their

strategic planning that the West would play a crucial role in intervention should Serbia in fact

proceed with its nationalistic intentions. The Balkan actors were soon to learn as to how

dangerous of a gamble they were taking (Petersen, 2011). The Balkan actors failed to take into

consideration that the Western states were hardly actors of aid to any noninterest bearing

conflict. The European States were in the midst of setting up the European Union; they referred

to themselves as the European Community up until this point. The European Community, and

after 1993, the European Union, did not possess any international ability to intervene in conflicts.

The Treaty of the European Union, effective on November 1, 1993 was the only document thus

far that acknowledged the need for an area of defense within the community. The European

Union’s “three pillars” were mostly designated to expand the Union’s mission into the political

as well as the economic realm (Carlson & Weston, 2012). The early stages of the Yugoslavian

disintegration, at the most crucial moments were not part of any political agenda for the EU.


54

The United States had an even more ambiguous role in the Balkans. As communism

collapsed, the United States could now turn its full attention to the war in Iraq and its attempts to

reverse Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Tragically, the Balkan actors would find out too

late that the United States had no interest in aiding in any particular Balkan conflict. It was more

concentrated on protecting its interests in the Middle East. It was not clear during the initial

stages of the war that most leaders and politicians of the West fully understood the situation that

was unfolding in the Balkans. Their interests were at no threat at all; intervention was not in the

picture at this point, while hopeful Balkan actors still anticipated aid that was nowhere in sight

(Petersen, 2011).

The decade of the 1990’s was to be the bloodiest in Yugoslavian history. As they walked

out of the League of Communists of the Yugoslavian Congress in 1990, the Slovenes and Croats

prepared for succession. In December 1990, Bosnia democratically elected its first president

Alia Izetbegovic. As Slovenes, Croats, Muslims, and Macedonians prepared for independence

the Serbs prepared for war. Radovan Karadzic ascended to leadership of the Serbian Democratic

Party in Bosnia, while Zeljko Raznatovic or as he was known in the Balkans Arkan, prepared

his Tigers one of several Serbian paramilitary forces to be ready to engage in combat. The

Yugoslav National Army transferred weapons and soldiers to be part of the new Serb force.

Most non-Serbs were not alarmed they were anticipating aid from the much more powerful West

(Petersen, 2011). Their hope was that the West would not have to engage in combat, but would

intimidate the Serbian forces and force them to accept the newly found states as well as territorial

boundaries that now existed. Slovenia was the first to hold elections and 88 percent of its

population voted for independence (Pond, 2006, p. 18).


55

On June 25, 1991 Slovenia had officially declared independence. A ten day war emerged

and as much as the Serbs had prepared for such a war the attempt was halfhearted. Most Serbs

were not even engaged in combat, nor did the military command call for a cohesive plan of

action. Seeing that only mediation would be necessary, the European community agreed to

mediate the conflict. The foundation for the Brioni Accord was successfully laid out and with it,

the war ended (Gibbs, 2009). Although Slovenia had a long way to go before being officially

recognized by the European Community or the United States, the Slovenes had gained full

control over their territory and faced no more threat by the Serbs (Petersen, 2011).

Croatia was to be a different story, with years of suppressed grievance about what had

happened to Serbian nationals during World War II, Croatia fueled the hatred by replacing the

red star flag of Yugoslavia with its red and white checkered flag, the symbol of the earlier

Ustasha regime. Croatia went further in downgrading the Serbian minority from “constituted

nation” to “national minority” and to make matters worse from the Serbian perspective, Serbs

were expunged from police forces, educational, medical, and even private institutions. When

Croatia declared independence the anticipation of war was high. The City of Vukovar was under

Serbian siege for 87 days. The Serbs were victorious and had burned down about 90 percent of

the city (Pond, 2006). Across Croatia, more than six thousand people lost their lives and over

half a million were displaced (Pond, 2006, p.18). Furthermore, Serbian forces gained control

over one-fourth of Croatian territory in Krajina and established a stable front line at the end of

1991 (Pond, 2006, p. 18).

The problem here again, consisted of the expectation that aid from the European Union

would come; however, there was no European Union at this point only individual states of

Europe who were generally in favor of the independence, but did not have ultimate enforcement


56

powers as to aid against these atrocities. While the European states were mostly in favor of

independence, Great Britain and the United States were much more reluctant to do so and called

secession illegal at this point. Germany’s decision on supporting independence for both Slovenia

and Croatia, with the argument that such recognition would suffice as a deterrent for Serbia to

invade further, led to a reluctant acceptance of such succession by the rest of the European

Community. This inferred that once one republic had the right to secede so did the others.

In Bosnia, the case would be the bloodiest yet. While Germany’s use of recognition as a

deterrent strategy eliminated any preservation of Yugoslavia it did not deter Serbia from its goal.

It could not have control over Slovenia and Croatia now without facing off with the powerful

European Community. However, Serbia saw Bosnia as its next target; after all, Bosnia’s

population was composed 32 percent of Serbian nationals (Petersen, 2011, p. 121). While the

Germans and most of Europe took protection of Croatia, the Americas took the lead on Bosnia

and believed the best way to preserve peace was to follow German footsteps and recognize

Bosnian independence. Bosnian leaders, including Izetbegovic recognized the dangers of early

recognition, but changed their views after what happened in Croatia and Slovenia. Bosnia

declared independence on March 1, 1992 and immediate fighting broke out. The European

Community recognized Bosnia on April 6, 1992 and the United States followed a day later.

However, this recognition did not stop the conflict and the state further descended into war. The

number of dead, wounded, and displaced would top anything previously imaginable. Civilians

were killed in the period of May, 1992 through August, 1992 which is now known as the period

of ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces (Zimmerman, 1999, p. 192).

The battle in Bosnia was a confusing one indeed, not only did Serbian forces attack the

Muslim population of Bosnia, but Croats formed their side of the state as well. At one point


57

Croatian forces launched an estimated 1,000 shells a day into the eastern half of Mostar which

was the Muslim side of the city (Glenny, 2000, p. 641). The West attempted to introduce a series

of peace plans before the major fighting had occurred in the early months of 1992 with the

Lisbon peace plan. However, it was rejected by Izetbegovic. Further plans were drafted but

rejected by one side or another before implementation could take place. Meanwhile the bodies

continued to pile civilians were the targets of these atrocities. The European Community and the

United States continued to talk peace rather than intervention. It was not until February of 1994

that a contact group composed of the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, and Germany,

was put in place that would make a steady progress towards intervention or an agreement

between the warring parties. Violent events, such as the mortar shelling of Sarajevo’s

marketplace, helped tilt Western opinion to support more forceful measures. With the help of

the United States the imbalance of force previously on the Serbian side was now more equal.

Muslim and Croatian forces were able to regain some of the Serbian territorial gains, but it

would be no compensation for what was about to happen in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

Meanwhile the United Nations as an Organization and North Atlantic Treaty Organization were

on the sidelines the key players were the Western nations who chose to get involved (Degan,

1999).

By 1993 most of the Bosnian refugees had retreated to Srebrenica. Srebrenica was

declared as a safe haven because it had been under the watch of the Dutch-administration and

United Nations Protection force known as the UNPROFOR Even with the Dutch Protection

Serbs were not about to give up their nationalist goal, and were preparing a final attack on the

town of Srebrenica. Meanwhile, many Bosnians including the General of Drina Corp, one of

Bosnia’s stronger defense armies, Naser Oric, aimed to show the International Community the


58

true face of Serb savagery with the hope that these images would prompt the West to speed up

involvement in the region. Serbs committed even more savagery but there was no Western

involvement. Serbian forces managed to enter the town of Srebrenica, on July 6, 1995 and took

in Dutch personnel hostage on July 11, 1995 (Petersen, 2011). General Ratko Mladaic bused

over 23,000 women and children out of the town, leaving the rest of the men and women at his

mercy to be brutally massacred (Glenny, 2000, p. 650). The Serb forces engaged in a five-day

slaughter of an estimated 8,000 Bosnians (Glenny, 2000, p. 650). This was the final straw and it

would soon prove to dictate how interventions from the West would be implemented across the

globe.

The West launched Operation Deliberate Force in August of 1995 after a second shelling

of the Sarajevo marketplace. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign was to

force Serbian authorities to the bargaining table. The Dayton agreements were finally put in

place, the Croats and Muslims agreed to work together. Finally the Contact Group of the West

had reached an acceptance of a 51:49 territorial split between the Muslim-Croat Federation and

Serbian entity, and Milosevic had agreed to accept the agreement in return for an end to

sanctions (Petersen, 2011, p. 127) . The agreement, although weak, brought an end to the

killings; Western involvement was marked as hesitant and incoherent. At the conclusion of the

Bosnian War, the West had brokered major accords in Bosnia and several in Croatia. The

international community established the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former

Yugoslavia, which was to bring justice to the perpetrators of the warring events. Finally, the

Western powers recognized a threshold for the use of violence and that crossing this threshold

would constitute intervention (Mayall, 2007).


59

As carefully drafted and extensive as the Dayton accords were, they failed to include

Kosovo. This gave Milosevic leverage over attacking the republic next. However, the United

States anticipated this move and President Bush sent a warning letter to Milosevic stating that in

the event Milosevic should engage in conflict with Kosovo, the United States will not delay its

military forces into attacking Serbs in Kosovo and Serbia proper (Judah, 2008, p. 71). This

created the hope for the Albanians that the West would recognize Kosovo’s legitimacy and that it

would protect its state against military invasion of Serb forces. While at this time Macedonia

and the rest of the Southern subsystem maintained somewhat of a calm front, the engagement of

Serb forces in that region would cause the Western powers to engage in the Balkans more so

than they anticipated.

As the events of Serbian doings came to light many human rights activists blamed the

West for being hypocrites. That making such statements as “never again” in conjunction with

what happened in Srebrenica was just a fault line to acknowledge their mistake and move past it.

While the majority of European states were against intervention, the intervention eventually took

place because of the enormous amount of shame accompanied with a “little-too late”

intervention in the northern states (Judah, 2009). Nevertheless, the European states along with

the United States recognized the need for diplomacy to back up force, as Ambassador

Zimmerman concludes:

“For three years of the Bosnian war, the Western countries had attempted to rebuff the

Serbian aggressors, bloated by their use of force, without making them fear that force

would in turn be used against them. Western diplomacy was reduced to a kind of cynical

theater, pretense of useful activity, a way of disguising a lack of will. Diplomacy without

force became an unloaded weapon, impotent, and ridiculous” (Petersen, 2011, p. 129).


60

The ambassador may very well have had a point in his explanation of diplomacy without force;

only at the time when force was administered did the Serb forces take the threats seriously.

Arguably Serb forces may have anticipated eventually there would be the use of force against

them by outside powers, but they pushed until that threat became reality. The employment of

force prior to negotiations may not be the answer either, as Kosovo saw it, the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization bombed Serbian targets without effective diplomacy in place, at which point

they did not know what was to happen after the bombings (Glenny, 2000). By the time of the

Kosovo incident, the international community had grown increasingly impatient with Milosevic

and questions were being raised as to how to deal with him as a bargaining partner, as most of

the international community believed that he had gotten off too easy in the case of the northern

states. With this anger directed at Milosevic and with the events of Srebrenica still in fresh

memory, the West was more open in going all in to subdue the troubles that were occurring in

the Balkans.

As the West saw it, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had presented Milosevic with an

ultimatum to end hostilities and retreat to his territories. Despite the United Nations passing

Resolution 1199 that called for cessation of hostilities and the deployment of over 1,800

monitors by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to observe the ceasefire,

continuous violence occurred (Zagar, 2004). The massacres in Srebrenica continued to and as

more ultimatums were given to Milosevic there still seemed to be no end to the violence. The

North Atlantic Treaty Organization commenced bombing on March 24, 1999 to which the

Serbian regime responded with increased violence and effective ethnic cleansing of Kosovo

(Malcom, 1999). The decision to intervene was clear at this point; the West would devote

enormous amounts of military, economic, and political support to Kosovo Albanians to halt the


61

violence, and the Kosovo Air campaign would redefine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

and its military power in intervention after the Cold War. While the Security Council did not

approve the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air campaign, the West continued to intervene

in matters of the Balkans after 1991 (Judah, 2008). The West would also continue to monitor the

situations in eastern Slavonia, southern Serbia, and Montenegro up until its independence in

2006 (Veljaca, 2012).

While the cases of the Balkans illustrate more of a reluctant intervention with a more

active intervention later on in the conflicts, it is important to recognize that these interventions

were largely conducted on the part of independent states from either the European Community or

the United States as a whole. There was certainly a conclusion of the enormous fighting and

attempts of ethnic cleansing which could have escalated to genocide in the Balkans. However,

the interventions slowed the process of how these states were to function afterwards. Decades

after the war there is still no clear future for the southern states of the Balkans while the northern

states of Croatia and Slovenia, largely due to their demography and closeness to key European

sectors, have prosperous and stable governments.

Chapter IV

Conclusion

Conclusively, the Balkan case was unique in that it did invoke a semi-threat to the

international community as each republic demanded individual independence. .However,

countries within the European Community did not explicitly feel threatened by this. Germany

followed by France and the Vatican, pushed for recognition of statehood for Croatia and


62

Slovenia and later on for Bosnia (Todorova, 2004). It was perhaps that this recognition caused

further republics to demand independence. However, Yugoslavia started to dissolve well before

this. If the International Community had failed to recognize such independence; a need for

intervention would still exist. None of the republics were ready to give the Serb state complete

power in the absence of the central Yugoslavian government. Each wanted autonomy and with it

to be recognized as an individual state by International Community.

The ethnic and religious diversity in this conflict caused a substantial problem amongst

the republics as well as initiation for intervention by the United Nations. The threat of State

Sovereignty, the dissolution of Yugoslavia, and the ethnic cleansings threatened international

security. All were justifications for intervention by international law standards. However, as

outlined in the beginning of this research, intervention for humanitarian reasons had still not

been established as a set guideline nor has it been established thus far. The gray area that these

documents present leaves room for endless debate as to when, where, why, and how intervention

should occur. In the Balkans peacekeeping missions were the only enforcement policy by the

United Nations as an organization all other intervention to stop the Serb army from killing and

taking over territories was either conducted by the United States or the European Community.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was only involved once the war escalated to an

uncontrollable point and after the Dutch were taken hostage as massacres started to escalade in

the town of Srebrenica. When negotiations failed to stop the Serb army from attacking Kosovo,

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, without the Security Council approval and without

consideration of diplomatic measures, engaged in a raid of air bombings onto Serb targets to

make the Serbs retreat (Simic, 2009). While this worked in containing the Serbs and forcing


63

them to retreat to their territories, it failed with diplomacy. Hence no one knew what to move

make next nor how to continue after the bombings.

This further goes to illustrate that all documents drafted are only as good as long as they

are enforceable. This researcher does not argue for the existence or the need for existence of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine, the argument

here is the enforceability of these documents. While there are severe disagreements on what

constitutes the right to life, liberty, and freedom, at the point when the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights was drafted, the individual states who signed this document acknowledged that

there is such a thing as a human right. The “universal” applicability of those rights may be

questionable, but nevertheless those who signed the declaration in essence acknowledged such

human rights as existing (Abdel-Bour, 2004).

Currently the situation in the Middle East is escalating to an intolerable level. The Arab

Spring or as many have referred to it as the Arab Awakening, has caused havoc and unrest across

the Arab states. While the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have

intervened in cases such as Libya, the intervention was slow. Even when the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization moved out, unrest and chaos continued to erupt despite the fact that the

former government was out of power (DeWall & Omaar, 2012). This shows that it is not only

important to decide on intervention, but to decide on post-intervention strategies. However, the

problem this researcher aimed to address is simply when, why, and how should intervention take

place. As we have seen in the past, intervention is unpredictable, unreliable, and may be

anticipated, but it is not guaranteed as the case in the Balkans demonstrated.

The researcher proposed one strategy to be explored when dealing with intervention.

Establishing a guideline or requirement for intervention regardless of interest or state bias, yet


64

still allowing for intervention to be in cooperation with international law. This may seek

international law reform. However, unless there is a closer investigation of the intervention

process it will continue to occur as it has in the past and will continue to stay unpredictable and

fatal to those dependent on it. Such a proposition raises the question of an International Police or

Army that would lead such interventions. There are several guaranteed objections to this

proposition. States would become insecure and threatened by such a powerful military. Hence

mistrust as to what this new police force’s actions would be against each state would arise.

However, when the facts of the past and the amount of time it has taken individual states

to agree on intervention is taken into consideration. The question arises as to how many lives

could have been saved if there had been such an international enforcer of international law on

behalf of human rights? How can states be sure that such an international force would in fact

look out for the interest of all peoples in the world of all human beings? The answer is not

simple, for in all analysis’s of previous interventions states were more inclined to intervene

sooner than later when they had a significant interest in the country where conflict was arising.

Those who were dependent on the international community for intervention, such as the states of

the Balkans, failed to see such intervention until it was much too late for the citizens. The

current policies leave two options. Reform International Law to allow intervention on behalf of

human rights or throw the entire Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine out and allow further

selective interventions.

While the arguments and debates thus far aim to put the blame on the West, whose states

have been accused of intervening when it serves their interest and for reasons not entirely

humanitarian, but, in fact, selfish and potentially territorial. It needs to be addressed that the

questioning real underlining reason for intervention has so far only hindered timely intervention.


65

The facts claim that there have only been a handful of countries willing to intervene; hence their

motives, however questionable have led to the conclusion of intervention on behalf of human

sufferings. When intervention took place such as illustrated in the Balkans, at least some lives

were saved. This also raises the question of; should there be intervention at all. Perhaps the

International Community should not meddle in other’s policies therefore honoring state

sovereignty boundaries. Arguably this is an option, however, why have such a document as The

Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and to go further, why invoke the Humanitarian

Intervention Doctrine if it is subject to convenience and interpretation?

Justification for human rights is another factor that stops the negotiations and decision on

intervention. The argument is that the West is imposing its values and ideologies in order to

direct the rest of the world on how they should act and what their practices should be. On the

contrary, this researcher with the available data, is of the opinion that if The Universal

Declaration of Human Rights should be sustained there needs to be stronger enforcement of the

rules, stronger than the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. There is a need for a representative

for all member states of the International Community. States and nations have agreed to the

existence of human rights to the point that such a document was needed after the atrocities of the

Second World War. As such, there is no imposition of ideologies from the West, but merely the

acknowledgement of the existence of such rights as is the right to life and freedom for each

individual human being.

This research does not aim for an explanation of what these individual human rights

mean to an individual person or even to each state. Rather it aims to conclude that whatever life

means to one person, there is the underlining acknowledgement that there is “life” and no one

individual or state should be the judge to take it away from another person. If the government is


66

unable, unwilling, or turning on its people and causing masses of its citizens to be massacred or

tortured, then as states who have adapted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights we have

agreed that this is unacceptable and thus intervention should take place.

If international law forbids intervention based on violation of state sovereignty then the

solution should be to place human rights under the jurisdiction of the International Community.

Hence, declaring such violations as above state sovereignty. However, if the agreement

cannot be reached for human rights to be above the laws of state sovereignty then there is no

longer a need to continue the arugment of human rights on a universal lavel., For this would

cause any intervention into a state’s domestic affairs be it humanitarian or not, to result in a

violation of International Law, if such law is enforceable. The world will continuously see

issues of human rights violations, but only those willing to risk it or powerful enough to veto or

violate with International Law without facing consequences, will be the ones deciding on

intervention. Again, this will spark criticism as to interventions of this kind being interest

driven, but unless there is reform or a valid solution, such criticism will not vanish.

The current international dilemma is Syria. Thousands of people are already dead and

many more are dying on a daily basis, meanwhile the international community is proposing

sanctions which have yet to work. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been reluctant to

intervene because of its intervention in Libya. The United Nations has no enforcement

mechanism to bring individual outside actors such as the United States or the European Union to

assist in the conflict. There are those who argue against intervention because the West has

seemingly intervened enough in the Arab Awakening without adding to these events. While the

population of Syria is being wiped out as the Assad government has turned on its own people,

the international community aims to negotiate and sanction the country. Yet the Syrian citizens


67

are in desperate need of intervention, and are crying for help. As former US ambassador, Kurt

Volker expressed: “what is the magic number of deaths that will prompt the international

community to act?” (Volker, The case for Military Intervention,2012). Would a compliance and

corporation on humanitarian intervention, per the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine solve the

problem of Syria? There are several other factors which are hindering such compliance however,

it certainly would at least offer a potential solution.

This further illustrates the need for a strong and unified stand on human rights issues.

There may be hundreds of documents in such a regard, but the international community is in

need of reforming their documents as well as their enforceability. Drafting such documents is

useless if enforceability is in question. If there were such a principle as a set state of guidelines,

which arguably exists at this point within the doctrine for humanitarian intervention, then there is

no need for argument guidelines but rather of enforcement. Yet, here human rights activists are

still exploring the option of intervention in Syria as thousands of citizens are dying daily. The

documents, the international community has drafted have no bearing to the solution required by

the Syrian people. If the need exists for the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine, then such a

document should have enforcement powers with it. All possible solutions should be taken into

account. Arguing whether intervention is bias or self-interest driven does not solve the problem.

The argument should me geared at the necessity of intervention to protect life. Kao (2010) has

argued that justifying intervention could come from reaching a consensus on what constitutes the

right to life, this researcher tends to disagree with that stance. Hence, this type of argument tends

to lead back to the initial stages of the problem and the definition of life by every states standards

(Kao, 2010, p.92). Kao additonaly raises the point that there is a need to take cultural differences

into account when intervention is in question. In that respect, she offers an explanation to the


68

understanding od the use of ethnocentric judgments in general. In example, if the practices of

African female genital mutilation are analyzed the question becomes aswhether or not those

practices also constitute a basis for international intervention, as they arguably violate human

rights? Some multiculturalists and traditional cultural relativists would argue that many of these

women accept the practices of their culture. Therefore, outsiders cannot impose any judgment

regarding the morality or ethics of these practices.

This is a relevant point because it further suggests that any judgment made by any outside

actor on behalf of a state is intrusion and a sign of disregard for state sovereignty. However, if

all bias is disregarded and a value-neutral approach is taken on the issue of female genital

mutilation. The question then is not whether the international community deems such an act

wrong, but whether those victims of such practices can in fact raise awareness to what is being

done to them, and in so display their disproval and objection to these actions. However,

contemporary anthropologists who have studied these practices argue that these cultural practices

are often imposed upon the women of these societies without their agreement. Many of these

women may not readily accept these practices of their patriarchal societies. Their voices are not

always heard, and it is hard to make a judgment based upon on one’s own belief that this is

“morally wrong.” It does not make intervention less likely, unfortunately, the international

community and the United Nations themselves, are of the assumtion that there will be outside

judgment on their actions. In the case of Africa, it is not seen appropriate to impose ones values

and judgments on such practices, however if the cries for help are loud enough for the

international community to hear them then should this not constitute and justify intervention?

These are difficult questions to answer and without proper research into the possibilities

of such new reforms, there is no clear answer and perhaps there will not be. This researcher


69

deems it important that such questions be addressed by the International Community if the aim is

to unify the view on human rights and ensure that each and every human being on this planet is

entitled to life, liberty, and freedom no matter where and what state they are citizens of.

FURTHER RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

The researcher proposes that the following research topics be addressed in an aim to

conclude as to what direction the International Community should take if its aim is to secure

human rights and prevent conflict. For one, it is important to understand that the belief is that

human rights are constructed and there may never be a common ground on what human rights

practices are. In fact, there may never be one definition of the right to life. It is certainly hard to

define such topic in one state alone, impossible for the entire world. Second, if countries aim to

keep the right for intervention and sustain the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine, then a clear

legal precedent needs to be set for such intervention. It may be with a creation of a new

organization similar of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which would be composed of all

member states and represent the interests of all its sponsors. The solution could also entitle the

North Atlantic Treaty Organization with such capabilities and make it the official army of the

world. It would be privileged with intervention rights based on set guidelines within international

law. Third, incorporating the “Responsibility to Protect” within International Law and the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights would require nations to address their moral

responsibilities towards human beings, rather than resources and interests. Lastly, realizing that

military intervention or the threat thereof, is more effective and powerful in deterring and

stopping vicious crimes within states, then sanctions and the threat of loss of alliances alone.

This may have its downside, for no state wants to willingly deploy its troops to fight a war which


70

does not give them any gain. From a moral perspective, it is a gain for the entirety of human

kind. Effective military strategy results in less loss, and employed early enough results in higher

payoffs and enemy retreat.

If the latter issues are not addressed and left as they are, the Humanitarian Intervention

Doctrine is ineffective. Unless states come to the agreement that something more must be done

to eliminate the bias and the debates arising from these documents. The debate will continue.

Hence, the International Community will be be a little too late to solve conflicts. This results in

more casualties around the globe. In many instances, if states are given the choice to act or not to

act, states are more inclined to follow their interests rather than the interests of all human beings.

Therefore, giving a choice on intervention to states will constitute continuous debates. Drafting

strict, rather than open-ended guidelines for intervention would eliminate such choice option and

give faster decision making results.

Another topic is the subject of sending peacekeepers to explore the issue; such missions

have usually proven as failures, as peacekeepers are often blocked from being in the center of the

conflict. At other times, these are volunteers who if forced into the battlefield have no training in

preventing the loss of life, their own and others in battle. Peacekeepers should be sent after the

conflict, to assist in negotiations and mediations between the parties.Another reason for

employment of peacekeepers after rather than, in the initial stages of the conflict, lies in that

intervention based on human rights violations does not leave room for negotiations. Often the

perpetrators of such crimes are the actual government, as the case in Libya and Syria, or another

entity within the government, such as the case was in the Balkans. The perpetrators generally

lack any respect for human life themselves, thus military intervention becomes the only choice to

stop them.


71

However, without further research into the possibility of a United Declaration of Human

Rights incorporated into International Law, which would make intervention not only possible,

but mandatory by world standards, based on the facts presented that human life is at stake.

Without the analysis of these propositions, this researcher does not believe that there can be a

solution to the Humanitarian Intervention dilemma. This would not entail an ontological

justification for grounding human rights in a theological manner. It could be based on minimal

requirements for assessing human needs and priorities. The world as a global order must move

forward on this issue, or conflicts will lack resolutions, and therefore cause more human life to

perish.


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HUMAN RIGHTS: RESPONSIBILITY, SOVEREIGNTY AND THE LAW

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