UNA-Canada Research Papers> Agendas for Change Papers

Humanitarian intervention as an Instrument of Human Rights

by Nancy Gordon and Gregory Wirick
March 1996

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and not necessary of the United Nations Association in Canada.

This paper was first presented to the seminar, "States Without Law: The Role of Multilateral Intervention to Restore Local Justice Systems," organized by the Canadian Committee for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the United Nations and by the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, December 9, 1995.

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This paper is intended to provide a bird’s eye view of the recent record of international humanitarian intervention. It will resemble a bird’s eye approach because the topic is too vast to permit one to be comprehensive. Instead, we have opted to offer some definitions, a few observations drawn from recent experience and, we hope, certain insights about the nature of such intervention and what we can expect from it in the near future.

 

A Working Definition

The classical definition of intervention is "dictatorial interference by a sovereign state, a group of such states, or an international organization, involving the threat or use of force or some other means of coercion, in the domestic jurisdiction of an independent state against the will or wishes of the government of the targeted country."¹ One of the problems today, however, is the incidence of situations — Somalia is a good example — when the will of the government is immaterial since no effective governmental structures still survive.

Non-intervention is the norm in the conduct of international relations. Acts of intervention are what must be justified. The 19th-century English philosopher, J.S. Mill, posed the central questions: "First, what degree of tyranny or oppression justifies or obligates such an intervention?; secondly, at what cost can such an intervention be carried out?; thirdly, whether it can be carried out only in support of an identifiable ethnic group or more generally?" According to one scholar, the justifications for overriding non-intervention can be categorized into three broad groupings: self-defence; consent; and humanitarianism.²

One definition of humanitarian intervention is "a military operation whose primary purpose is the relief of human suffering. This distinguishes such efforts from peace-keeping, whose basic goal is monitoring political and military accords; and from large-scale warfare, in which relief of human suffering is a goal secondary to strategic, economic and political concerns."³ But while this is an accurate placing of humanitarian intervention on the scale of engagement, it does not reflect the potential and the importance of civilian and political elements in any such operation.

There are two different kinds of humanitarian intervention: those relating to natural or human disasters and operations relating to complex political emergencies which inevitably involve hostilities or the threat of them. Humanitarianism is controversial because it does not require consent by the target state — that is, respect for state sovereignty — and it appears to go beyond the UN Charter with respect to legitimate self-defence and international peace and security.⁴ Yet according to a distinguished Algerian diplomat and scholar, the Charter does provide for a broader interpretation that would permit interference in domestic affairs. Articles 1 and 34 both refer to "situations" which might lead to a breach of the peace. Article 34 calls on the Security Council to investigate whether "the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security."

So the Charter, the Declaration, the Geneva Convention, as well as the UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and the 1951 Convention on Refugees and their protocols, should be taken together to better understand the meaning of necessary intervention as intended by the framers of the Charter. More than any Security Council resolution, this initial, comprehensive, and fully persuasive body of international legislation gives the right, and the obligation, to both the United Nations and regional organizations, to come to the rescue of endangered populations by providing relief, and active contribution to the resolution of the conflict.⁵

 

Recent Experience

During the Cold War humanitarian intervention was very rare and certainly controversial.⁶ Although there were plenty of instances where, by today’s standards, involvement would have been considered a reasonable response to massive violations of human rights, there was no willingness on the part of most states to contemplate such a drastic departure from the norm of non-intervention. Nevertheless, even in the 1960s and 1970s, the United Nations began to reverse that norm by censuring the white governments of Rhodesia and South Africa. It was the beginning of what the UN Secretary-General of the day, Javier Perez de Cuellar, would observe was "`an irresistible shift in public attitudes toward the belief that the defense of the oppressed in the name of morality should prevail over frontiers and legal documents.’"⁷

The shift intensified with the ending of the Cold War. This sea-change in international relations had several effects. First, one of main purposes of the norm of non-intervention was eliminated: the prevention of conflict among great powers. The former protagonists were brought into a relationship where co-operation was possible and, on many matters, was achieved. Second, the collapse of communism has resulted in a greater degree of international consensus concerning what constitutes proper domestic order.⁸ The end of ideology — at least temporarily — has undermined the option of non-alignment. Third World States "can no longer enjoy the non-aligned space opened by superpower rivalry or place competitive bids for superpower support in an ironic inversion of the strategy of divide and rule."⁹ A third effect has been the increasing acceptance of the protection of individual rights as an international norm.

In the post-Cold War environment, UN Security Council Resolution 688 broke new ground in terms of interference in what had previously been regarded as the domestic affairs of a member state. The resolution had a humanitarian objective in its insistence on an immediate end to repression of the Kurdish population of Iraq by the Iraqi government. It led to the establishment of ‘safe havens’ in northern Iraq to allow Kurdish exiles to return to Iraq under international protection. For the first time, the Security Council had linked humanitarian concerns to international peace and security and had given humanitarianism greater weight than non-intervention.

At least one scholar, however, has questioned whether the intervention in Iraq was a fundamental departure from conventional practice, noting that if "Iraq had been occupied, the Kurdish problem would not have arisen and there consequently would have been no need for that armed humanitarian intervention."¹⁰ But most observers have considered it a watershed and a precedent. "This was a practical and innovative implementation of the policy of humanitarian intervention, meaning by this not that the intervening powers had only humanitarian motivations, a condition that would be impossible to meet, but that it had in part a humanitarian motivation and that its consequences were of clear and substantial benefit to the populations concerned."¹¹

Moreover, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, has been quoted describing northern Iraq as a rare example of successful humanitarian intervention. "In this instance, superior military force was subcontracted to the allied coalition that secured direct access to civilians; but afterward the operation was turned over to civilian humanitarian organizations with NATO firepower in reserve in Turkey."¹²

In Somalia, the Security Council in December 1992 sanctioned military intervention to stop Somali clan leaders and freelance thieves from interfering with international efforts to distribute food to starving Somalis. "The intervention was not solicited by anyone who could credibly claim to be the sovereign government of Somalia; it was initiated by the Security Council at the request of concerned aid organizations and member-states."¹³ One such concerned aid organization was CARE Canada, which actively petitioned both the Canadian government and the US State Department, and then the United Nations, to intervene militarily in Rwanda. As the implementing agency for the World Food Programme, CARE was unable to distribute food aid because of the ongoing conflict, and became convinced that intervention was the only means of ensuring that humanitarian aid could be delivered to those in need. The aims of the intervention were ambitious, to say the least, what American envoy Robert Oakley has called ‘total pacification and nation-building.’"¹⁴ Moreover, it was an initiative taken in the absence of any indigenous authority; "for all intents and purposes the government consisted of the United Nations commander, a special United States envoy, and a committee of Western NGOs."¹⁵

The results were disappointing if not disastrous. Lives were certainly saved, but the cost was high and it continues. "As advanced countries have repeatedly learned, in a struggle between the technically sophisticated and unsophisticated, there is often a mismatch in political determination just as large as there is in technical capability."¹⁶ The Clinton administration grossly underestimated the price others were willing to pay to stop the U.S. Marines. America lost 34 soldiers compared to an estimated 10,000 Somalis killed during the engagement, but the decision was made to withdraw.¹⁷ Moreover, in the aftermath of the intervention, Somalia remains essentially ungoverned.

There is a sense in which Somalia, along with a number of other African countries, has simply shrugged off the colonial interlude — relieved itself of the whole first tier of imported industrial development. Certainly, without a government in place, international lending institutions such as the World Bank will never come back. And any central government that is formed, no matter how modest, will need an immediate infusion of funds from outside to keep running until it can collect taxes.¹⁸

Such is the bitter legacy of the first semi-official "failed state."

The results of humanitarian intervention in ex-Yugoslavia were scarcely better. The trouble here was the mix of mandates — an "ambiguous middle course of limited humanitarian intervention."

The international involvement in Bosnia did not indicate moral indifference or a lack of humanitarian concern on the part of those leaders of states who were in a position to do something. Nor did it indicate the easiest choice in the circumstance — that would have been to wash their hands of Bosnia and do nothing at all. It indicated anguish and frustration concerning what, if anything, could be done about the human suffering the conflict was causing. It also reflected an absence of confidence that armed intervention could successfully deal with the problem; indeed, the main Western military powers feared that it would cause an even greater loss of life to the civilian population of Bosnia and to their own forces.¹⁹

It has been argued that the cure was worse than the disease since the consequence of the West’s hesitation and indecisiveness was a stalemate that may well have prolonged the war.

Overall, UN pressures maintained a teetering balance of power among the belligerents; the interveners refused to let either side win. Economic sanctions worked against the Serbs, while the arms embargo worked against the Muslims. The rationale was that evenhandedness would encourage a negotiated settlement. The result was not peace or an end to the killing, but years of military stalemate, slow bleeding, and delusionary diplomatic haggling.²⁰

In Rwanda, it was evident from the outset of the crisis, as African Rights has pointed out, that there was a range of different and contradictory goals. These goals were: (1) feeding needy people, (2) stopping the killing, (3) denying legitimacy and impunity to the mass killers, (4) preventing flows of refugees and obtaining a cease-fire and (5) obtaining a political settlement.²¹

Almost all these efforts were stymied, however, by the lack of timely intervention. The U.S. experience in Somalia made the international community reluctant to take early action. Eventually, France intervened in Operation Turquoise — of all countries "perhaps the least appropriate to do so" because of its close relations with the Habyarimana government which so skilfully planned and executed the genocide.²² Nor should we ignore the fact that "between 6 and 11 per cent of the whole Rwandan population — and more than half of Rwanda’s Tutsi population — was killed within a two-month period. Compare that with the Second World War, where France lost 1.5 per cent of its population and Germany 5.3 per cent — during several years of fighting."²³

Yet despite the evidence amassed of the genocide, the international community has been reluctant to admit its full horror. John Watson, the Executive Director of CARE Canada, has written:

Forty years of experience in all corners of the world in the worst imaginable conditions did not prepare us for the Rwanda disaster. Habits of thought, standard operating procedures and working relationships among people and organizations — all hard-won lessons built on years of trial and error — have proved especially deficient in the face of what the United Nations has officially determined was ‘concerted, planned, systematic and methodical’ genocide.

Moreover, the outcomes of assistance were often perverse.

What each of us knows how to do best — run a refugee camp, deliver medical assistance, command peace-keepers, write ‘rules of engagement’ for security teams, direct donors’ money and resources to where they are most likely to be needed — too often accomplished exactly the opposite of what was intended.²⁴

In the refugee camps it managed, for example, CARE continued its practice of employing locals and using existing social structures. The practical result of this strategy was that CARE found itself employing many of the people who had in fact incited the genocide, effectively transferring what had been going on in Rwanda to the refugee camps and supporting a government in exile.

In all three cases — Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda — international intervention was not grounded on self-defence or consent; the grounds were largely if not entirely humanitarian.²⁵ But the record is grim. The fact is that the humanitarian ethos has overreached itself — in good faith, to be sure, but a rigorous process of self-examination is required as a result.

The post-Cold War world has witnessed a proliferation of conflicts, but the leading powers have increasingly withdrawn in political terms while intensifying their involvement in the humanitarian aspect of these crises. Yet what appears to be a contradiction is, in reality, a complementarity. The great powers have chosen to retreat before the disorder that appears to prevail in much of the South. The result has been that Western NGOs have moved in in their place to offer palliative care, but little else. Above all, NGOs cannot be expected to provide political solutions to political problems. They can be expected to be aware of the political context in which they operate and the political ramifications of their acts. The experience of recent humanitarian intervention should serve as a cautionary tale to humble us and give us pause to reflect and reshape our efforts before we launch new initiatives.

One of the first requirements is to understand the main features of humanitarian intervention and it is to that topic that we turn now.

 

Main Features of Humanitarian Intervention

There are certain key features of humanitarian intervention which should be clearly delineated. The first relates to the dramatic and rapid increase in the number and power of NGOs. This is explained, in part, by the vacuum of power that afflicts too many Third World states, particularly in Africa. Many governments control only a portion of their formal territory or what they do control is minimally governed, with the barest modicum of resources and results. Into this breach has stepped a plethora of NGOs, some of them very competent and skilled, others much less so. The results have been unsettling. For one thing, NGOs are unaccountable either to their benefactors which supply resources or to those they profess to be helping. Moreover, their sheer numbers present a persistent problem of coordination — of knowing who is doing what and how. For example, there are over 150 NGOs at present in Rwanda and they are enormously influential, with 65 percent of the budgets of three of the social affairs ministries channelled through them.

Gayle Smith, a senior official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has described the results as an "anarchy of good intentions" — a highly competitive "free-for-all" rather than a rational or systematic division of labour.²⁶ Moreover, a dependency syndrome is also manifesting itself in several recipient countries.

Increasingly... governing authorities are not fulfilling their responsibilities because they expect that international agencies will come in and do the job. They encourage their captive populations to see international assistance as a right, and assistance by the local governing authority as a privilege, rather than the other way around.²⁷

This tendency is made more disturbing because of another important trend: the phenomenon of "permanent" emergencies.

The comforting idea of a return to normality at the top of the flipchart is an abstraction. Instead practitioners in complex emergencies talk of coming to terms with the chronic and on-going nature of these emergencies. [UNICEF consultant Mark] Duffield has referred to them as ‘permanent emergencies’ in which war economies develop and winning groups have a vital interest in sustaining conflict above all else.²⁸

We are witnessing something unique: the integration of humanitarian aid into the dynamics of conflict. Some scholars have written of a new relief paradigm. This paradigm:

accepts a state of ‘turbulence’ as the norm, and a high degree of agency powerlessness as inevitable. It does not see its task as huge and massive effort to re-supply a community and ‘get it back to normal’. Instead it feels its way to supporting a community through chronic crisis over the longterm, often at a distance and through third parties. Its programme style is more like the slow administration of a drip than an injection, a catalyst rather than a solution. This type of creeping and opportunistic relief model requires a major shift in the mindset and approach of most relief workers.²⁹

Yet at the same time, and this too ranks as a significant feature of humanitarian intervention, the very concept of intervention in the domestic affairs of states is more widely-accepted than ever before. There is less and less tolerance for gross and persistent violations of human rights: the public outcry is greater, the media attention more concentrated, and the efforts to assemble coalitions to struggle against such violations more sustained. "There is little doubt that the trend in international law is running in the direction of violable sovereignty, and that future humanitarian interventions will be justified in part on that basis."³⁰

 

Future Initiatives

Where do these contentious and rather contradictory trends lead us? In our view, they lead us to the growing incidence of situations where sovereignty is shared. This is a difficult notion, but an important one if the international community is to grapple with the repercussions of collapsed or severely dysfunctional states. There has been considerable discussion about reviving trusteeship or new forms of protectorates for those countries deemed to have spoiled their chances.³¹

First, we need a reaffirmation of the values that bind communities and societies together. Where governments are clearly incapable of exercising authority or where they are determined to abuse it, the international community should first take note and then take action. Francis Deng, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Internally Displaced Persons, has remarked on the need for a set of norms or standards to emphasize the responsibility of states for their own welfare and to indicate that they cannot expect to exercise their sovereignty with absolute impunity. However, Mr. Deng has also emphasized the fact that sovereignty relates, above all, to the pride of the people.³² The keys are empathy and respect.

The priority has to be security of people to lead normal lives and to develop their potential. If either is thwarted, then sovereignty is abused. For these reasons, we agree with Michael Oliver’s recent reflections on this topic for the Group of 78. He called for a doctrine of global protection of human rights to determine a state’s ability and willingness to protect all its citizens. He quotes the Commission on Global Governance, to wit: "Where people are subjected to massive suffering and distress ... there is a need to weigh a state’s right to autonomy against its people’s right to security."³³

If the protection of human rights forms the basis for intervention, what are the means? Ideally, of course, there should simply be standards and the means would materialize when needed. But in the real world, we know this to be a false hope. Available means too often translates into the most meagre of resources and the most limited and tentative of commitments. The lament about lack of political will goes up each time there are discrepancies of this sort — the grim disparities between what the international community may hold true and what it is willing to put into the struggle.

This will not change. There will be no panaceas, no conversions on the road to anywhere that will prompt the required resources and will to follow. The successes we achieve will come as the culmination of a great deal of effort: they will be hard-won victories and they will occur most readily where political opportunity coincides with political will. For opportunity is the key that unlocks the door to political will and opens the door to possibility. Haiti is a good example. There the Americans were willing to intervene in support of a clear political objective. So far, so good. But one of their motivations was undoubtedly to forestall a mass migration of Haitians to the United States. This may be hypocrisy, but it helped to stiffen their resolve and the results thus far have been commendable. Charles William Maynes, the editor of the U.S. journal, Foreign Policy, has written of the need for "opportunistic idealism" — the impossibility of intervening everywhere should not deter us from acting anywhere. We need to move ahead where we can.³⁴

One area where we can move concerns an international court to try war crimes. The appeals for such a body are growing numerous. Most recently, in a report issued on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials which convicted senior Nazi officials for war crimes, the International Federation of the Leagues of Human Rights urged the United Nations to set up a court that would be "permanent, independent of all powers, of states and money." It added, however, that such a court would need a tough new police force to support it with "the capacity, defying frontiers and the principle of sovereignty, to arrest torturers or have them arrested wherever they manage to find refuge".³⁵ Such a court would also face a serious challenge in convincing the victims of war crimes that their tormentors will be punished. In the former Yugoslavia, for example, many people have lost all faith in the international community, and most do not believe that those responsible for the war in the Balkans will ever be brought to justice.

Unfortunately, once again the UN’s record to date has been disappointing, as the pathetic tale of the UN Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda amply demonstrates. The horror of the genocide over, the UN decided to send a mission to monitor current violations. Sadly, the record of this operation — the first one set up by the newly-established office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights — was catastrophic. "The failure of most international human rights groups to visit Rwanda during the genocide and the focus on current violations rather than the genocide has, justifiably, encouraged a corrosive cynicism that questions the very value of human rights organizations."³⁶

The refusal of the UN field operation to address the genocide does not augur well for the work of the International Tribunal that has been established to investigate war crimes in Rwanda. It is an astonishing indictment of a new UN body — the office of new High Commissioner for Human Rights. At the root of the problem, as African Rights has passionately argued, is a vain effort at a God-like neutrality rather than at solidarity with suffering peoples. It is a model that will not work and we can only hope that the UN will learn from its mistakes, although it has not been a notable student of past failures.

Another area that needs attention is that of civil-military relations and cooperation. For too many involved in humanitarian operations, the military is the enemy. In a brief to the defence and foreign policy reviews in 1994, CARE Canada underlined the need for a more rational division of labour between three broad categories of professionals: multilateral organizations (such as UNHCR, the World Food Program, and UNICEF); UN forces; and executing agencies. The division suggested was the following:

Multilateral Organizations

• Political and Diplomatic Coordination; Monitoring and Regulating of Contractors and Implementing Agencies; Information Transfer between Donor Governments, Host Government(s) and Implementing Agencies (NGOs and other contractors); Legitimation of International Presence and Establishment of Norms of Conduct.

UN (or other multilateral mandated) Armed Forces as Directed by the Security Council or UN Secretary-General

• Security for Intervention Team, Legitimate Use of Armed Force, Demobilization of Local Armed Factions, Mine Clearing and Training of Indigenous Personnel for Mine Clearing, Training and Reconstruction of Indigenous Military Forces Responsible to Legitimate Civil Authority.

Executing Agencies (NGOs/Voluntary Sector/National Aid Agencies)

• Direct Delivery and Provision of Humanitarian Assistance in all its forms, "Cross-over" Transitional Assistance for Economic and Social Development and Reconstruction of Civil Society.³⁷

There needs to be a thorough airing of different perspectives and an attempt to build bridges between disparate corporate cultures. As Major-General Lewis MacKenzie (Ret.) has observed, "A shot-gun marriage has developed between peace-keepers and development aid organizations."³⁸ Perhaps it is time now to formalize the rites. Nevertheless, cultivating a true appreciation of different approaches among all the players will not happen overnight, nor will all the difficulties be resolved after a handful of "brainstorming" sessions. One analyst has compared enhanced civil-military cooperation to a new form of combined operations.³⁹ To effect this level of cooperation will require a systematic and sustained effort to improve dialogue and exchange among the various communities involved. To this end, CARE Canada proposed the following:

• A programme of personnel secondments and/or exchanges between the three sectors to acquaint members of these very separate communities, before major humanitarian relief operations, with the problems and issues faced by their opposite numbers.

• That the Department of National Defence institute regular briefings by NGOs of military staff in advance of deployment to the field on integrated peacekeeping operations. NGO personnel are almost always present in a region before major multilateral operations begin, so those conducting the briefings would have extensive experience in and timely knowledge of the region concerned.

• CARE Canada notes with approval the recommendation of the Canada 21 Council that a group within government be given the job of collecting and assessing information about Canadian participation in such operations. However, we have serious reservations about locating this group within the Department of National Defence. Such a body needs to be in a more culturally and institutionally "porous" organization, one with much less secrecy built into its daily work habits and one that is more open to non-government people. NGOs are now and will likely take on even greater importance as one of the essential legs of the multilateral intervention stool.

• CARE proposes that the Government of Canada establish an ongoing forum on Canada’s participation in emergency humanitarian operations. As well, it should organize "regional specific" forums or roundtables (Rwanda, Balkans, Somalia, Angola, etc.) as needed.

Some of our recommendations have been taken up, but most of them remain untouched by government or NGOs. The fact is that we need an honest assessment of what NGOs can and cannot do: true strategic coordination demands a rational division of labour based on comparative advantage with a clear sense of the importance of timing our interventions.

A third area is one outlined by the American academic Tom Weiss earlier this year in Montreal when he called for a new UN humanitarian entity to deliver emergency aid in those active war zones where Chapter VII economic or military sanctions are in effect. "These volunteers should not be part of the common UN staff system because they would have to be appropriately insured and compensated."⁴⁰

In Weiss’ estimation, such an entity should have ground rules for mounting and suspending deliveries and it should be separated from the Secretary-General and attached directly to the Security Council.

The absence of the normal array of UN humanitarian organizations once enforcement action begins could also act as an incentive for belligerents to be more accommodating in mediation or negotiations. In any event, insulating purely humanitarian efforts would help reduce the politicization of the work of UN organizations... UN humanitarian agencies should devote their limited human and financial resources to what they do better, namely emergency aid after natural disasters or cease-fires as well as reconstruction and development.⁴¹

Finally, we must acknowledge the enormous stakes of intervention. Among the principles that we must bear in mind is to recognize that to make peace is to decide who rules, to avoid half-measures, and to make humanitarian intervention militarily rational.⁴² We must recognize the intensely political nature of these complex emergencies and not harbour any illusions about the speed with which they can be ameliorated. An analogy from an American academic illustrates the dilemma well.

In the wake of Vietnam, the American public has come to expect military engagement in other countries to correspond to surgery: The United States diagnoses the problem, performs the appropriate operation — the shorter, cheaper, and cleaner the better — and then moves on. However, state building is more likely to resemble psychiatry: long and frustrating treatment bringing only incremental change, with no obvious or speedy date for termination.⁴³

The greatest challenge of all will be to ensure that humanitarianism does not overwhelm all other considerations, some of which should take precedence. African Rights, which has done much to puncture some of the sanctimonies surrounding the world of NGOs and civil society, is not sanguine.

At the end of the day, relief organizations will always make charitable works their priority, which means that human rights concerns will be fudged or jettisoned. In the short term, some people may be fed or treated as a result — an outcome not to be despised. But this is at the cost of addressing more fundamental political and human rights concerns. In the long term, more people will remain alive under more tolerable conditions if humanitarian relief is provided in a way that is consistent with basic human rights.⁴⁴

The authors of this paper are more hopeful, while recognizing that we have a long way to go before the terrible ironies of humanitarian intervention can be sorted out. Arguably, the greatest dilemma of all remains the first and most fundamental: When to intervene? On the one hand, The Economist magazine has warned that, "The democracies must not fall into a habit of mind which tells them they can adjust any little untidiness in the world that arouses their distaste. That is the road back to empire." On the other hand, if the evidence of ethnic fascism and slaughter is compelling, can we be reduced to being bystanders? "A justified intervention needs a genuinely deserving victim to rescue; a wise one needs a solid prospect of a success and an interest of one’s own to be served in the process."⁴⁵ This is a shrewd formula; the trouble is, does it always work?

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Endnotes

¹ Robert H. Jackson, "Armed humanitarianism," International Journal, Autumn 1993, p.581. | BACK |

² Ibid., p. 583. He writes, "Self-defence is intervention taken for valid reasons of national security or international peace and security; consent is when the intervention is at the request of the government of the target state — perhaps to assist that government to counter a prior intervention or to defend itself against an armed rebellion; and humanitarianism, when the intervention is to protect the civilian population of the target state (or segments of it) from grave abuses at the hands of its own government or anti-government guerrillas or as a result of domestic anarchy." | BACK |

³ Michael J. Mazarr, "The Military Dilemmas of Humanitarian Intervention," Security Dialogue, vol. 24 (2), 1993, p. 152. | BACK |

⁴ Jackson, p. 584. | BACK |

⁵ Mohamed Sahnoun, Remarks at a Conference, "Beyond Development Cooperation", International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, 1994, p. 5. | BACK |

⁶ There were three cases of intervention during the Cold War which many legal scholars identified as justified on humanitarian grounds: the Indian intervention in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) in 1971, the Tanzanian intervention in Uganda in 1979, and the Vietnamese intervention in Kampuchea in 1979. But the interveners themselves justified their actions on the grounds of self-defence. Jackson, p. 588. | BACK |

⁷ Quoted in Michael Mandelbaum, "The Reluctance to Intervene," Foreign Policy, Summer 1994, p. 13. | BACK |

⁸ Mandelbaum, p. 14. | BACK |

⁹ Jackson, p. 589. | BACK |

¹⁰ Jackson, p. 593. | BACK |

¹¹ Fred Halliday, "The New World and its Discontents," LSE Magazine, Autumn 1993. | BACK |

¹² Thomas G. Weiss, Overcoming the Somalia Syndrome — "Operation Rekindle Hope"?, A Paper presented at the Experts Meeting on "State Sovereignty, Human Rights & Humanitarian Action," International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, Montreal, 1-2 March 1995. | BACK |

¹³ Jackson, p. 595. | BACK |

¹⁴ Mandelbaum, p. 4. | BACK |

¹⁵ Jackson, p. 596. | BACK |

¹⁶ Charles William Maynes, "Relearning Intervention," Foreign Policy, Spring 1995, p. 98. | BACK |

¹⁷ ibid. | BACK |

¹⁸ William Finnegan, "Letter from Mogadishu: A World of Dust," The New Yorker, March 20, 1995, p. 75. | BACK |

¹⁹ Jackson, pp. 601-603. | BACK |

²⁰ Richard K. Betts, "The Delusion of Impartial Intervention," Foreign Affairs, November/December 1994, p. 25. | BACK |

²¹ Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, Humanitarianism Unbound? Current Dilemmas Facing Multi-Mandate Relief Operations in Political Emergencies, African Rights, Discussion Paper No. 5, November 1994, p. 28. | BACK |

²² Alain Destexhe, "The Third Genocide," Foreign Policy, Winter 1994-95, p. 11. | BACK |

²³ ibid., p. 15. | BACK |

²⁴ A. John Watson, "How we botched it in Rwanda," The Globe and Mail, December 23, 1994. | BACK |

²⁵ Jackson, p. 604. | BACK |

²⁶ From a Speech by Gayle Smith, Special Advisor to the President of U.S. AID on the Horn of Africa, at a seminar, "NGOs and Peacebuilding: Lessons Learned and Next Steps," Ottawa, November 21, 1995. | BACK |

²⁷ Humanitarianism Unbound, p. 5. | BACK |

²⁸ Hugo Slim, The Continuing Metamorphosis of the Humanitarian Professional: Some New Colours for an Endangered Chameleon, A Paper presented at the 1994 Development Studies Association Conference, Lancaster, United Kingdom, 9 September 1994, p. 10. | BACK |

²⁹ Slim, p. 11. | BACK |

³⁰ Mazarr, p. 156. | BACK |

³¹ Paul Johnson, "Colonialism’s Back — and Not a Moment Too Soon," The New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1993, p. 22 ff. | BACK |

³² at a seminar at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ottawa, November 14, 1995. | BACK |

³³ Michael Oliver, "Failed States and the Role of the UN," A Paper at a Conference on Failed States: How Might the UN and Canada Help?, September 23, 1995 and the Report of the Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood, London, 1995, p. 71. | BACK |

³⁴ Charles William Maynes, "Containing Ethnic Conflict," Foreign Policy, Spring 1993, p. 20. | BACK |

³⁵ Reuters Ltd., Paris, November 20, 1995. | BACK |

³⁶ Africa Rights, Rwanda: A Waste of Hope, March 1995, p. 7. | BACK |

³⁷ ibid., p. 20. | BACK |

³⁸ Notes taken from a Forum on Peacekeeping and Development Aid, International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, April 6, 1994. | BACK |

³⁹ Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Special Joint Committee of the Senate and to the House of Commons on Canada’s Defence Policy, June 2, 1994, Issue No. 15, p. 19. | BACK |

⁴⁰ Weiss, op. cit. | BACK |

⁴¹ ibid. | BACK |

⁴² Betts, op. cit., pp. 30-32. | BACK |

⁴³ Mandelbaum, op. cit., p. 12. | BACK |

⁴⁴ Humanitarianism Unbound, p. 36. | BACK |

⁴⁵ "A New World Order: To the victors, the spoils — and the headaches," The Economist, September 28, 1991, p. 24. | BACK |