CONCEPTUALIZATION OF HUMANITARIAN INTEVERNTION
2.9. Applicable Concepts
2.9.3. International Community
weapons. More importantly the principle of immunizing non-combatants should be applied all the times of intervention. As Savić (2007), posits that humanitarian intervention is meant to relieve people from the cruelty they are subjected to by their regimes or any other actor that is a non-state actor.
action taken by the international community should not have selective eyes in tackling such matters, as they pose a direct threat to international order and serenity.
2.9.3.1. International Community and Humanitarian Intervention.
Dowell (2007), argues that during a grave and far reaching infringement of human rights the international society has an ethical duty to intercede, utilizing the force if all else fail. The international law permits intervention by the international community to end or prevent widespread of human rights violations, but that intervention should be authorized by the relevant body, which is the United Nations Security Council. The intervention to prevent genocide or the widespread human rights infringements became the ethos of the United Nations. That ethos was informed by the outcomes of the Holocaust after which the international community made a promise that such actions would never be witnessed again on the face of earth. However, the Rwandan genocide proved that the international society lacked the political will to prevent actions of that nature (Annan, 1998). The inaction towards the Rwandan genocide was a direct disregard of the legislations that include the UN Charter of 1945, the Universal Rights Declaration of 1948 and the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide of 1948. Despite the failure to prevent such an occurrence in Rwanda still there is an ethical duty that is borne by the international community to sojourn (the menace of) a humanitarian catastrophe. However, it is categorically asserted under international law that the legitimate authorization of such action is a prerogative imputed to the UN Security Council. Furthermore, the coalition to intervene should be drawn from the armies of the states that are signatories of the UN Charter and those are the states that ultimately form what came to be termed the international community.
Nonetheless, it does not only end by the political will of the international community to intervene, but it also extends to the how these intervening countries conduct themselves. The conduct during the intervention is of uttermost importance as it is through the behaviour of belligerents that human suffering is halted. The principles of how combatants should conduct their operations are enshrined under the international customary law, which largely originate from the just war doctrine. The just war doctrine is divided into three branches the first one being Jus ad Bellum, the second one being Jus in bello and lastly being Jus Post Bellum. The three mentioned principles of war are closely linked to humanitarian intervention because it involves the usage of force. The first branch Jus ad Bellum, which means the right to resort to war. According to Walzer (2004), states should have
the moral just reason to resort to war. In the case of humanitarian intervention, the international community should be able to justify intervention on the basis of the widespread of human rights violations. The UN Security Council should use its veto to vote in favour of halting the identified human suffering. Moreover, if the intervention is authorized by the UN Security Council is justifiable as the UN Security Council is the legitimate body to do so.
Furthermore, the intention of the intervention by the international community should be nothing but to save human rights from being defiled. According to Finnemore (1996), no hidden agendas that should cloud the sacrosanctity of humanitarian intervention. The international community can only resort to humanitarian military intervention after all other pacific means have failed to yield positive results. Secondly, Jus in Bello is chiefly concerned with the right or just conduct of war and the conduct of soldiers during the war. This branch is described by many as the branch that sets out the criteria or provide standards of conduct for armies, individual soldiers and nations at war. The international community should at all times monitor the behaviour of the combatants during intervention, as the very conduct determines the success or the otherwise of humanitarian intervention (Fortna, 2004). The principles that govern combatants during intervention are proportionality, discrimination and responsibility.
The principle of proportionality should be determined before the intervention by the international community as they are the ones who take the decision to intervene. The force used should not bring about more human suffering than it intends to stop it. The generation of escalated human suffering would defeat the purpose of the intervention. The weapons used should not among others involve the biological weapons as these weapons (WMD) are prohibited by the international customary law. The second principle, namely discrimination chiefly speaks to the targets of war.
That areas occupied by the civilians should not be targeted by the intervening countries or armies.
The number of dying civilians should not supersede that of the militias. The principle of responsibility is best summarized by Crawford (2007), when he says, it is the responsibility of belligerents to direct attacks to those who pose danger to them. Moreover, it is their (soldiers’) duty to immunize those qualified as non-combatants. However, this principle does not ignore the fact that there are possibilities of non-combatants being caught in the crossfire. Nevertheless, trained soldiers are encouraged to minimize that by properly identifying targets before launching attacks.
Lastly, the Jus post Bellum is the most critical branch of the just war theory, which also applies to humanitarian intervention. This branch is largely concerned about what happens after the intervention or war. As a humanitarian intervention is the responsibility of the international community that means the ethical duty to end the suffering of the people of the state concerned.
The end of human suffering is equally to the success of the intervention (Seybolt, 2008). The international community has the duty to halt a humanitarian catastrophe. An intervention should not only end by the deployment of soldiers, but it must extend to addressing the root cause of the problem. If the widespread of human violations was coming from the government of the concerned state must be addressed in such a way that people of that state must be given an opportunity to elect a new government that they can trust. However, if the suffering was discharged by the non- state actors, new policies that are accommodating all the parties concerned should be established and implemented. Be that as it may, the process of electing new representatives, formulating new policies, and adopting economic and political system in that state should not be directly influenced by outsiders but their arbitrating is required. As the direct involvement of the external forces would amount to the breaking of the standards of the UN Charter or amount to what Dolan and Hovil (2006), allude to as the misuse of humanitarian intervention as the Trojan horse through which the superpowers of this world hide their agenda for regime change. Most important in the post intervention era the rule of law should be restored.
The international community is the bearer of the moral responsibility to save human lives using force. That ethical duty is activated by the actions or atrocities that shock human conscience (Walzer, 1977; and Kolb, 2003). That moral responsibility should be exercised to protect the human rights of the population of the world willy-nilly of their nationality, political association, religious line, race, gender and age. The intervention by the international society should be authorized by the UN Security Council as that body is allocated with the responsibility to maintain international order and security. However, the intervention could also be practiced by the bodies like NATO or coalition by states on the condition that they have the approval of the UN Security Council and their actions will be closely monitored. The action by bodies like NATO to intervene are considered to be undertaken at the behest of the international community. But such actions should be undertaken in instances where there are prominent human rights violations. In cases where intervention is performed by organizations like NATO certain submissions should be made to the UN Security Council. Those submissions should involve the reason for intervention and
what is hoped to be achieved after the intervention. However, the international society cannot be reduced to the bodies like NATO. The international community should not place their own narrow interests ahead of the victims of bloodshed and stand aside in the face of conscience-shocking violence, but must instead demonstrate a political willingness to step in and put an end to human suffering (Bellamy, 2009).