A Legal Analysis of Humanitarian Interventions as Mechanism to Stop Human Rights Violations

Abstract

In the post-Cold-War era, intervention to alleviate humanitarian crisis and protection of human rights had gained wide legal and moral acceptance. Through the examination of two post-Cold-War interventions, in Somalia and Kosovo, it was argued that the linkage between humanitarian assistance and the protection of human rights was tenuous. In both cases, the methods employed to provide humanitarian assistance were not consistent with those required to protect human rights. The dilemma of how best to protect human rights is one of the most persistent problems facing the international community today. This article is aimed at examining the effectiveness of humanitarian intervention in stopping human rights violations. For this purpose, data was collected through primary and secondary sources. The data collected was analyzed, using two approaches. The content analysis approach was used in order to analyse the various texts and institutions put in place for the protection of human rights. Moreover, the critical approach was used in order to bring out the weaknesses of such laws and institutions. Throughout this research, it appeared that humanitarian intervention is to some extent ineffective to stop human rights violations because the available laws on humanitarian intervention are unimplemented or only implemented to a lesser extend owing to the fact that there exist several encumbrances, challenges and difficulties in the implementation thereof. This is worsened by the fact that human rights violations are left at the behest of state since the international jurisdiction to handle violations of a human nature is sometimes ineffective to handle human rights violations coupled with the fact that there is an inert problem of differences in legal systems, the smooth application of human rights law is thereby hindered.