The Kosovo intervention and collective self‐defence

Abstract

Without a UN Security Council authorization, the case for humanitarian intervention in Kosovo cannot justify NATO's use of force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999. By contrast NATO member states could have defended an armed intervention as a collective self‐defence action under Article 51 of the UN Charter, though the campaign would have been significantly different than Operation Allied Force. Because it demands that one consider the legal interest of the intervening states in the defence of the victim and whether the forceful intervention is sufficiently targeted at the violation in question, the doctrine of self‐defence may provide a legal basis for interventions in humanitarian crises and a useful set of criteria to evaluate their legality, especially when the UN Security Council fails to act.