Humanitarian intervention (HI) and the responsibility to protect (R2P): The United Nations and international security

Abstract

ABSTRACT Humanitarian intervention has undergone several changes since the Second World War and the justifications behind it are continually expanding and being reshaped as a result of the interventions performed to resolve the conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan and Kosovo, as well as a result of the emerging post-9/11 paradigm. Humanitarian intervention, while open to many different definitions, is generally understood as the use of both hard and soft power across state borders by external forces with the goal of preventing or obstructing gross human rights violations without the permission of the state within whose territory force is utilised. Overall, this paper is an investigation into the topic of humanitarian intervention. However, it is primarily an investigation into the most recent manifestation of humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect and its failures, in sovereignty, morality, and legality in the context of the United Nations as the ‘Guardian Angel of Global Security’.