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Note on humanitarian intervention
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
Extract
Owing to widespread atrocities witnessed in the last decade of the twentieth century, and in particular those associated with the NATO intervention in Kosovo, the issue of humanitarian intervention has been thrust into the political and doctrinal limelight. In the legal sense, humanitarian intervention is one form of foreign forcible intervention.2 It may be defined as the use of force in order to stop or oppose massive violations of the most fundamental human rights (especially mass murder and genocide) in a third State, provided that the victims are not nationals of the intervening State and there is no legal authorization given by a competent international organization, such as, in particular, the United Nations by means of the Security Council. Such humanitarian intervention need not take the form of action by a single intervening State; but it must be unilateral. Thus, if several States pool their military resources together to intervene in a foreign territory, that constitutes a collective intervention. However, the intervention is unilateral, in that it is coercive action taken by some States acting as would do a single subject. Moreover, humanitarian intervention takes place only insofar as no consent is given by the third State. If consent is given, there is no need legally to invoke the concept of humanitarian intervention; rather, it will be intervention by invitation.
- Type
- Affaires courantes et commentaires/Current issues and Comments
- Information
- International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 85 , Issue 849: Les nouveaux types de conflits/New types of conflicts , March 2003 , pp. 119 - 134
- Copyright
- Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2003
References
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50 Ibid., § 2.28–2.33.
51 Ibid., § 4.11.
52 Ibid., Basic Principles, p. XII, Articles 1–3. For a commentary on these criteria, see § 4.18ff. of the Report.
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55 Report, op. cit. (note 49), quoted Article 1, and § 4.18ff.
56 Ibid., § 4.19.
57 Ibid., § 4.20: “It is important to make clear both what these two conditions include and what they exclude. In the Commission's view, these conditions would typically include the following types of conscience-shocking situation:
— those actions defined by the framework of the 1948 Genocide Convention that involve threats to or actual loss of life on a large-scale;
— the threat or occurrence of large scale loss of life, whether the product of genocidal intent or not, and whether or not involving state action;
— different manifestations of ‘ethnic cleansing’, including the systematic killing of members of a particular group in order to diminish or eliminate their presence in a particular area; the systematic physical removal of members of a particular group from a particular geographical area; acts of terror designed to force people to flee; and the systematic rape for political purposes of women of a particular group (either as another form of terrorism, or as a means of changing the ethnic composition of that group);
— those crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war, as defined in the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols and elsewhere, which involve large scale killing or ethnic cleansing;
— situations of state collapse and the resultant exposure of the population to mass starvation and/or civil war; and
— overwhelming natural or environmental catastrophes, where the state concerned is either unwilling or unable to cope, or call for assistance, and significant loss of life is occurring or threatened.”
58 Ibid., §4.25.
59 Ibid., § 4.28–4.31.
60 Ibid., quoted Article 2.A., and § 4.33–4.36.
61 Ibid., quoted Article 2.B., and § 4.37–4.38.
62 Ibid., quoted Article 2.C., and § 4.39–4.40.
63 Ibid., quoted Article 2.D., and § 4.41–4.43.
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66 This ex post facto approach could obviously result in some corollary difficulties. Thus, for example, it could become difficult to determine at any given moment if a crime of aggression has been committed, since the constitutive elements of the crime, in particular the unlawfulness of the use of force, could materialize only after some time. Different solutions could be thought of: (1) In the case of a real humanitarian motivation (eventually to be determined by a tribunal) no crime of aggression could be committed because of the absence of a particular element of the mens rea required for being held guilty. A subjective intent at acting for the salvaging of populations would thus eo ipso wipe out the crime. (2) Or: the humanitarian motive does not preclude a condemnation for aggression if it turns out to have been an unlawful use of force, but it can be taken as a ground for mitigation. The determination of the crime would then remain itself floating, as a sort of hereditas iacens, as long as the final regularization or rejection of the acts by the international community has not taken place. This course may obviously pose particular problems with respect to the requirement of criminal law that the prohibited behaviour be sufficiently clear and predictable in advance. Mutatis mutandis, similar reflections would have to be advanced for questions of international responsibility (which may also differ according to specific recognitions of illegality or illegality by third States).