Humanitarian Intervention as Neocolonialism

Abstract

This chapter elaborates the practical challenge of implementing human rights through humanitarian intervention, that is, a military intervention without the consent of the targeted state. Its opponents view it as the contemporary form of colonialism. This claim is substantiated by retrieving the historical background of this practice in the just war theory, in order to examine whether there is a precedent of such practice, and looking at its legal basis in international law. The analysis reveals that it is not easy to found humanitarian intervention on the just war theory in general, because different authors hold different opinions, and it is the same case when considering international law. Be it before or during the human rights era, scholars do not agree that humanitarian intervention is an established practice legally founded. Even the new concept of Responsibility to Protect is not shielded from the same suspicion of furthering Western interests. That is why, for the critics, when one looks at the practice, its authors and the reasons offered, humanitarian intervention is a neocolonialism, understood as both an establishment of a local political bourgeoisie that protects the interest of former colonialists, and the repetition of the colonial project.