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LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE RESEARCH SERIES
Vol. 23
March/April 2013
No. 4
RESOLVED: THE UNITED STATES IS JUSTIFIED IN INTERVENING IN THE INTERNAL POLITICAL
PROCESSES OF OTHER COUNTRIES TO ATTEMPT TO STOP HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES.
The March-April NFL topic is indeed a timely one. It comes at a time when there is great controversy about the
ongoing abuse of human rights in Syria. President Bassar al-Assad has responded to rebel forces by engaging in the
widespread slaughter of his own people. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, describes the extent
of human rights abuses in a February 8, 2013 article in the New York Times: “The Syrian people are caught in a horrible
downward spiral. The government’s slaughter seems only to intensify as President Bashar al-Assad pursues a ruthless
strategy of draining the sea to get the fish — attacking civilians so they will flee and leave the armed opposition isolated.
Meanwhile, the sprawling collection of militias that constitute the armed opposition includes some that are themselves
torturing and executing prisoners and promoting sectarian strife. While not on a par with the government-directed
slaughter, their abuses encourage Syria’s minorities to stick with the murderous Assad rather than risk an uncertain
future under rebel rule.” The Syrian government has acknowledged that it possesses stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Some experts are concerned that as al-Assad’s hold on power becomes more tenuous, he may unleash his chemical
stockpiles on his own people.
Numerous members of Congress, including Senator John McCain have argued that the United States must take
immediate action to protect Syrian civilians. Yet the Obama administration has been unwilling to take action without the
authorization of the United Nations Security Council. BBC News explains that Russia and China have twice vetoed UN
resolutions that authorized taking action against Syrian human rights abuses:
France, Britain and the United States have argued for months in favor of taking stronger action
against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But Russia and China have blocked their proposed
resolutions. Mrs Clinton said that the Security Council must end the violence and urged the members
to "try once again to find a path forward.” The UK's David Cameron also called on the UN to act,
telling the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly that recent evidence of crimes against
children in Syria is "a terrible stain on the reputation of this United Nations". He singled out those
countries that "failed to stand up to these atrocities and in some cases aided and abetted Assad's
reign of terror" for particular criticism. The five permanent members of the council, who all hold
vetoes, have so far been unable to agree on a course of action regarding the conflict in Syria, which
has claimed some 27,000 lives over the last 18 months. (Sept. 12, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
world-middle-east-19738441)
Unfortunately, Syria is only the latest in quite a long string of human rights abuses involving mass killing, in some
cases extending even to genocide. Libyan civilians faced the wrath of their leader, Moammar Gadhafi, during a national
uprising in late 2010 and the first few months of 2011. James Pattison, professor of politics at the University of
Manchester, summarized these events in the book, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect:
“Gadhafi indicated that his regime intended to commit a massacre in his now infamous ‘no mercy’ speech, where he
called on his supporters to ‘go out and cleanse the city of Benghazi.’ Moreover, by the time the intervention was
launched, the regime had already demonstrated its willingness to use force against its own people” (2010, p. viii).
Unfortunately for Gadhafi, he had no friends among the permanent five members of the UN Security Council. The
Council called upon member states “acting nationally or through regional organizations” to “take all necessary measures
to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under the threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including
Benghazi.” The United States needed no further urging. Acting with support from NATO allies, the U.S. flew 5,316
sorties, 1,210 airstrike missions, and made 101 Predator drone attacks in the months following the UN authorization.
New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, praised the U.S. and NATO decision to intervene in an effort to stop
human rights abuses:
Mr. Obama and other world leaders did something truly extraordinary, wonderful and rare: they
ordered a humanitarian intervention that saved thousands of lives and that even Col. Muammar elQaddafi’s closest aides seem to think will lead to his ouster. We were all moved by Eman al-Obeidy,
the woman who burst into the reporters’ hotel in Tripoli with her story of gang-rape and torture, only
to be dragged away by security goons. If we had not intervened in Libya, Qaddafi forces would have
reached Benghazi and there might have been thousands of Eman al-Obeidys. It has been
exceptionally rare for major powers to intervene militarily for predominantly humanitarian reasons.
One rare example was the United States-led Kosovo campaign in 1999, and another was Britain’s
dispatch of troops to Sierra Leone in 2000 to end the brutal civil war there. Both were successes, but
came only after years of killings that gradually built up the political will to do something. Critics argue
that we are inconsistent, even hypocritical, in our military interventions. After all, we intervened
promptly this time in a country with oil, while we have largely ignored Ivory Coast and Darfur — not
to mention Yemen, Syria and Bahrain. We may as well plead guilty. We are inconsistent. There’s no
doubt that we cherry-pick our humanitarian interventions. But just because we allowed Rwandans or
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Darfuris to be massacred, does it really follow that to be consistent we should allow Libyans to be
massacred as well? Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none? If
the Libya operation is successful, moreover, it may help put teeth into the emerging doctrine of the
“responsibility to protect” — a landmark notion in international law that countries must intervene to
prevent mass atrocities. And that might help avert the next Rwanda or the next Darfur. (Apr. 2, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03kristof.html?_r=2&hp&)
Significant controversy surrounding the unwillingness of the United Nations to authorize action against the genocide
in Darfur during the years 2003 to 2005. Cristina Badescu, professor of international relations at the University of
Toronto, points out that UN inactivity was especially indefensible since its own agencies certified the extent of the
tragedy: “The UN referred to Darfur at the end of 2003 as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. By the spring of
2004, mass atrocities and crimes against humanity were widely known to be occurring in Darfur, and the number of ‘war
affected’ – (the UN’s term for those killed, raped, displaced, malnourished, etc.) civilians stood at one million. By June
2005, the number had reached 2.9 million. In seven years, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 civilians died, either from
violence, war, famine or disease” (Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect, 2011, p. 138). Many U.S.
human rights activists urged the Bush administration to take action, despite the absence of any UN authorization. But
the Bush administration was otherwise engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 1999, the Clinton administration became convinced that a human rights tragedy was underway in Kosovo, the
region of the former Yugoslavia. Dependable reports indicated that the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic was
conducting a systematic campaign of rape against younger Kosovar women and the mass execution of “battle-age”
males. The Clinton administration sought the authorization of the UN Security Council to take action, but all such
measures were vetoed by Russia and China. Despite UN Security Council inaction, the U.S. joined other NATO allies in
conducting a sustained bombing campaign, involving more than one thousand aircraft, lasting from March to June in
1999. Some critics argued that the bombing campaign resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties, but others,
including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, argued that NATO’s action was justified given the threat of
genocide. Art Eggleton, former Canadian Defense Minister, reported that NATO’s willingness to intervene saved
thousands of lives:
The decision to intervene is not an easy one. Inevitably, the motives of intervening countries are
questioned. I dealt with this firsthand when the Canadian government intervened in Kosovo in 1999.
Coming off a Bosnian war that saw approximately 100,000 people killed, we could not let Kosovo fall
into the same chaos. At the point we intervened, the campaign of terror by Yugoslav president
Slobodan Milosevic had driven more than 470,000 people from their homes and showed no signs of
stopping. Of course, we would rather have avoided armed involvement, so we explored every
avenue of diplomacy. But when a peaceful solution failed, military action became necessary. We had
a responsibility to protect, and that is what we did. We were criticized for our actions. But I firmly
believe that what we did in Kosovo not only saved many lives but created a powerful statement to
the effect that mass atrocities are morally abhorrent; that a state does not have a right to commit
mass crimes against its people; and that basic human rights are the birthright of humanity. (National
Post, Sept. 25, 2012, p. A16)
Another instance of genocide happened in the Africa country of Rwanda in 1994. In that case, both the United
Nations and the United States stood idly by while a well-documented case of genocide unfolded. John Curley, editor of
the Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, provides an account of this genocide:
Over thirteen weeks in the spring of 1994, half a million people were slaughtered in the Rwandan
genocide. The Hutu-run government sponsored the systematic elimination of the minority Tutsi tribe;
according to one estimate, three-quarters of its population fell victim to the killing. Additionally,
thousands of Hutu perished for opposing the brutal campaign. The Human Rights Watch detailed the
evolution of the genocidal tactics: “In the first days of killing in Kigali, assailants sought out and
murdered targeted individuals and also went systematically from house to house in certain
neighborhoods, killing Tutsi and Hutu opposed to Habyarimana. Administrative officials, like the
prefect of the city of Kigali, ordered local people to establish barriers to catch Tutsi trying to flee and
to organize search patrols to discover those trying to hide. By the middle of the first week of the
genocide, organizers began implementing a different strategy: driving Tutsi out of their homes to
government offices, churches, schools or other public sites, where they would subsequently be
massacred in large-scale operations.” (2008, p. 395)
The Hutu-controlled government apparently made a systematic effort to exterminate every remaining member of
the Tutsi tribe, according to Curley: “By mid-May, the authorities ordered the final phase, that of tracking down the last
surviving Tutsi. They sought to exterminate both those who had hidden successfully and those who had been spared
thus far - like women and children – or protected by their status in the community, like priests and medical workers. As
the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] advanced through the country, assailants also hurried to eliminate any survivors who
might be able to testify about the slaughter. Throughout the genocide, Tutsi women were often raped, tortured and
mutilated before they were murdered” (p. 396).
When President Bill Clinton visited Africa in 1998, he made a stop at the airport in Kigali, Rwanda. Speaking to
persons who had managed to survive the attempt at genocide, he offered the following apology:
The international community, together with nations in Africa, must bear its share of responsibility
for this tragedy, as well. We did not act quickly enough after the killing began. We should not have
allowed the refugee camps to become safe haven for the killers. We did not immediately call these
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crimes by their rightful name: genocide. We cannot change the past. But we can and must do
everything in our power to help you build a future without fear, and full of hope. We owe to those who
died and to those who survived who loved them, our every effort to increase our vigilance and
strengthen our stand against those who would commit such atrocities in the future here or
elsewhere. Indeed, we owe to all the peoples of the world who are at risk because each bloodletting
hastens the next as the value of human life is degraded and violence becomes tolerated, the
unimaginable becomes more conceivable. We owe to all the people in the world our best efforts to
organize ourselves so that we can maximize the chances of preventing these events. And where
they cannot be prevented, we can move more quickly to minimize the horror. So let us challenge
ourselves to build a world in which no branch of humanity, because of national, racial, ethnic, or
religious origin, is again threatened with destruction because of those characteristics, of which
people should rightly be proud.
INTERNATIONAL RESPONSIBILITY TO STOP HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
Lincoln Douglas debaters will need to understand two major international frameworks for addressing serious
human rights abuses. The first is the Genocide Convention and the second is the “Responsibility to Protect” compact
(R2P).
The Genocide Convention, technically entitled The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide, was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The Convention entered into force in 1951 and
currently has 142 signatory nations. The major motivation for the Genocide Convention was the international
revulsion at Nazi Holocaust. The phrase, “never again,” reportedly came from hand made signs held up by surviving
members of the inmates at the Buchenwald concentration camp, when it was liberated in April of 1945. The world
adopted the slogan “never again” as the catch phrase connected to the pledge in the Genocide Convention.
The Genocide Convention defines “genocide” as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; ( b) Causing
serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births
within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Though the United States was actively involved in crafting the language of the Genocide Convention, it did not
fully ratify the Convention until 1988 with the Senate passage of the Proxmire Act. When it ratified the Genocide
Convention, the United States accepted the responsible under Article 1 of that document “to prevent genocide” – “a
duty that rests upon all parties and is a duty owed by each party to every other.”
The second major international framework for addressing serious human rights abuses is the “Responsibility to
Protect” framework (R2P). When former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan left office in 1999, he was profoundly
troubled by the UN failure to halt the mass killings in Rwanda and Kosovo. He posed the question: “If humanitarian
intervention is an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to gross and systematic violations of
human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity?” The Canadian government took Annan’s challenge
immediately to heart, and established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. That
group produced a framework that eventually (in 2005) achieved unanimous acceptance by the UN General Assembly
as the way to properly balance national sovereignty against the responsibility to prevent human rights abuses.
Gareth Evans, the co-chair of the Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, explained this breakthrough in
his 2008 book, The Responsibility to Protect:
Throughout the decade, a fierce argument raged between, on the one hand, advocates of
"humanitarian intervention"—the doctrine that there was a "right to intervene" militarily in these
cases, against the will of the government of the country in question—and, on the other hand,
defenders of the traditional prerogatives of state sovereignty, who insisted that internal events were
none of the rest of the world's business. There was ample room, conceptually, to find common
ground between these extremes, but no one seemed able to locate or articulate it: the verbal trench
warfare, in the UN General Assembly and elsewhere, became ever more intense, and the inability to
agree on an appropriate response to each of these situations as they arose became ever more
frustrating and damaging. The breakthrough came with the emergence in 2001 of the concept of the
responsibility to protect and its subsequent unanimous embrace by the General Assembly, meeting
at head of state and government level, in 2005. This turned "right to intervene" language on its head,
focusing not on any rights of the great and powerful to throw their weight around but rather on the
responsibility of all states to meet the needs of the utterly powerless. In the first instance, the
responsibility to protect a country's people from mass atrocity crimes lay with its own government;
but if it proved unable or unwilling to do so, a wider responsibility lay with other members of the
international community to assist preventively and, if necessary, react effectively. (pp. 2-3)
The R2P framework reinterprets sovereignty as the responsibility of nations to prevent their own citizens from
human rights abuses. Importantly, however, it also calls upon all nations to take action to protect human rights within
those nations that fail in their responsibility to protect human rights. One Canadian group involved in the development
of the R2P framework, the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, characterizes this international
responsibility as a “willingness to intervene” (W2I) – through both “soft” (economic measures, education, etc.) and
“hard” (military) interventions.
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HUMAN RIGHTS VERSUS NATIONAL SECURITY: COSMOPOLITANISM VERSUS REALITY
Should the foreign policy of the United States be governed primarily by idealism or by realism? Should it be our
obligation to ensure the human rights of people, regardless of their nationality? Or should we instead resign ourselves
to the fact that we will never be able to right all wrongs beyond our borders? Essentially, this is a conflict between a
philosophy of cosmopolitanism and a political philosophy called realism. The Stoics were the first to refer explicitly to
themselves as cosmopolitans, seeking to replace the polis in ancient political thought with that of the cosmos in which
human beings could live in harmony. The basic idea of classical cosmopolitanism involves the notion that each person
is “a citizen of the world” and owes a duty, above all to the worldwide community of human beings. The main point of
Stoic philosophers contained a most significant idea: that they were, in the first instance, human beings living in a world
of human beings and only incidentally members of polities (that we today would call nations). The boundaries of polities
were understood by the Stoics to be historically arbitrary and most often the result of coercion and violence. Borders
obscured the common circumstances of humankind and thus, could not have the moral significance frequently claimed
for them.
Cosmopolitanism is based on the notion that each human being is equally worthy regardless of the nation, ethnic
group, or gender to which he or she belongs. This view also forms the basis of much of the eighteenth century
philosopher Immanuel Kant’s work. Kant not only accepted the notion of egalitarian individualism espoused by the
Stoics, but be also claimed that nations have the moral duty to the same moral standards as individuals. Most of the
global regimes, laws, and regulations associated with a global community are heavily influenced by Kant and the Stoics.
David Held, professor of political science at the London School of Economics, writing in the 2002 book, Governing
Globalization, makes the point clearly:
The human rights commitment to the equal worth of all human beings finds reinforcement in the
acknowledgment of the necessity of a minimum of civilized conduct and of specific limits to violence found in
the laws of war and weapons diffusion; in the commitment to the principles of the Nuremberg and Tokyo war
crimes tribunals (1945-6 and 1946-8), the Torture Convention (in 1984) and the statutes of the International
Criminal Court (in 1998) which outlaw genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; in the growing
recognition of democracy as the fundamental standard of political legitimacy which finds entrenchment in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and regional treaties; in the development of new codes of conduct for
governmental and international non-governmental organizations, concerning the transparency and
accountability of their activities; and in the unprecedented flurry of regional and global initiatives, regimes,
institutions, networks, and treaties seeking to tackle global warming, ozone depletion, the pollution of oceans
and rivers, and nuclear risks, among many other factors.”
In direct opposition to the notion of universal moralism articulated by cosmopolitan philosophers is the philosophy of
political realism, or simply realism. It is the oldest perspective on international affairs. It traces its roots to Thuycydides,
Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes. The realist interpretation of international affairs makes several basic assumptions
about the nature of international affairs. Because it assumes that the international system is anarchic and has no
supreme political authority, realism regards the state or nation as the principal actor(s) in international affairs. The
nation-state is said to be sovereign and not subordinate to any temporal power.
The essence of international realism is its belief in the primacy of nation-states’ self interest over moral principle.
Thus, for the realist, pursuing national self interest is the only moral obligation of the nation-state. The state is an agent
of the people in its jurisdiction. It exists to serve their interests and to protect their welfare. The absence of any central
order-enforcing power means that moral rules and ethical restraints are neither enforced nor enforceable. Since ethical
restraints are not enforced in this environment, they lose their binding character. Realists often speak in terms of
necessity. They claim that international conditions compel states to defend their interests. Since there is no objective,
central authority enforcing moral rules, there are always states that act in an immoral or self-interested fashion. A nation
that allows itself to be ruled by moral absolutes is always at an extreme disadvantage when other states don’t play by
moral rules but continually seek their own advantage. Because the very existence of the state is predicated on its duty
to protect the interests and rights of its people, it would be immoral for the state to act in a way that undermined those
rights and interests.
Realists claim that any morality must be based on what is realistically possible. From their perspective, Kant’s ideas
are fatally flawed because they do not conform with the ways states function in a world without a central authority. For
the realist, state sovereignty is the only way a state can protect itself from domination by stronger states. That is why all
international law has state sovereignty as its foremost rule. From the realist perspective, what we commonly refer to as
“global human rights” is nothing more than a dominant country like the United States pursuing its own interests. This is
so because there is no impartial and nondiscriminatory institution for enforcing global rules. The military strength of the
United States enables it to dominate the international security arena. Insisting that a nation value global rules above its
national sovereignty in this environment would mean only the domination of a weaker nation by a stronger nation. There
is very little difference between such a system and colonialism.
ANALYSIS OF THE TOPIC
As you will recall from The Value Debate Handbook, every proposition of value consists of two components: the
object(s) of evaluation and the evaluative term. The object(s) of evaluation is the concept, idea, or thing being evaluated
or critiqued in the resolution. The evaluative term is the word or words in the resolution that makes an evaluation or
critique of the object(s) of evaluation. The object of evaluation in this resolution is “intervening in the internal political
processes of other countries to attempt to stop human rights abuses.” The evaluative term is “justified.” The following
paragraphs are designed to provide assistance in understanding the issues involved in the resolution.
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ANALYSIS OF TERMS IN THE RESOLUTION
United States: Grammatically, this is the subject of the resolutional sentence. Does this mean that the affirmative
debater must justify unilateral humanitarian intervention by the United States? It should first be noted that the resolution
does not contain the word “unilateral.” This omission is significant, given that a similar NFL Lincoln-Douglas resolution
(January/February 2000) used the phrase “United States unilateral intervention.” In every instance of United States
humanitarian intervention, the action was taken in concert with other international partners. The intervention in Kosovo
was undertaken along with our NATO allies, though without United Nations approval. In Libya, the United Nations
Security Council authorized the intervention, but the United States and its allies provided the military firepower used to
neutralize Mohammar Gadhafi’s forces. Nevertheless, negative debaters are likely to argue that the wording of the
resolution forces the affirmative to defend unilateral intervention by the Untied States.
Justified: What does it mean to say that intervention is justified? In particular, must an action be legal under
international law in order for it to be justified, or is it enough that the action be morally praiseworthy? In actuality, the
word can be defined in either way. Webster’s Dictionary offers the following two definitions of “justified:” (a) “To prove or
show to be just, right, or reasonable;” or (b) “To show to have had a sufficient legal reason” (http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/justify). Ryan Goodman, professor of law at Harvard Law School, and former outstanding
debater at the University of Texas, argues that humanitarian interventions are legal only if approved by the United
Nations Security Council: “Since World War II, international law has prohibited states from threatening or using force
except in self-defense or pursuant to Security Council authorization. Although some scholars have argued otherwise, it
is difficult to escape the conclusion that international law forbids the unilateral use of force to rescue victims of a
humanitarian catastrophe. As a matter of treaty law, the UN Charter does not exempt UHI [unilateral humanitarian
intervention] from the prohibition on the use of force, and prominent General Assembly resolutions clearly support this
interpretation” (American Journal of International Law, Jan. 2006, p. 111). Yet other legal scholars have argued that
interventions can be “justified” even when they are not legal. The Spring 2012 issue of the Denver Journal of
International Law and Policy reports that “In the wake of Kosovo, distinguished international jurists Antonio Cassese
and Thomas Franck both came to the conclusion that HI [humanitarian intervention] is not yet legal, but justified” (p.
195). The Kosovo intervention, led by the United States and its NATO allies, was undertaken without the permission of
the United Nations and, therefore, not legal under international law. Former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan,
concluded that the Kosovo intervention, though not technically legal, “was supported by one of the most morally
defensible fundamental principles of the international legal system, the obligation to protect human rights”
(Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal and Political Dilemmas, 2003, 154-155). Much of the debate on the
March/April topic will center on whether “justified” refers mainly to a moral principle or strict adherence to international
law.
Intervening: What does it mean to intervene “in the internal political processes of other countries?” We normally
think of intervention as a form of military action. But does it make sense to think of military intervention as impacting the
“internal political processes of other countries?” If the objective of the military action is regime change, as it was in the
case of Libya, then it would certainly impact that country’s “internal political processes.” But diplomatic pressure or the
use of economic incentives or embargoes could also impact “internal political processes.” Dictionary definitions support
the notion that “intervention” could refer to military as well as non-military interactions with another country. The
American Heritage Dictionary offers two definitions of “intervene:” (a) “To involve oneself in a situation as to alter or
hinder an action or development;” and (b) “To interfere, usually through force or threat of force, in the affairs of another
nation” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/intervening). Perhaps the more useful “field” definition of “intervention” in the
context of human rights issues is that offered by the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. That
organization has founded a movement they call “Will to Intervene” (W2I). In their 160-page 2009 document entitled,
Mobilizing the Will to Intervene, they emphasize that human rights interventions can be either “soft” (involving economic
incentives, education, public shaming, etc.) or “hard” (meaning the use of military force) (http://romeodallaire.
sencanada.ca/en/resources/media/pdfs/w2i-report-migs.pdf).
Human Rights Abuses: Genocide is certainly the most prominent example of human rights abuses, but is it fair for
affirmative debaters to focus their defense of the resolution almost exclusively on genocide? Affirmative debaters can
argue that such a focus is fair, given that genocide is really the only example of human rights abuse on which there is
universal agreement. Negative debaters will likely argue for broad definitions of “human rights abuses” – such broad
definitions demonstrate the danger of affirming the resolution. Different cultures have varying interpretations of human
rights. A broad definition would allow the United States to use human rights as a pretext for intervention. Consider the
expansive definition of human rights contained in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"First generation rights" or civil and political rights, as described in the United Nations Universal
Declaration are: The right to life, liberty and security of person; Freedom from slavery and servitude;
Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; Freedom of thought,
conscience and religion as well as freedom of opinion and Expression; Freedom from arbitrary
interference with privacy, family, home or correspondence; Freedom of movement and the right of
asylum; The right to marry and found a family; The right to own property; Rights of association and
assembly; The right to take part in government and the right of equal access to public service; The
right to recognition as a person before the law; equal protection of the law; the right to an effective
judicial remedy; freedom from arbitrary arrest; detention or exile; the right to a fair trial and public
hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal; the right to be presumed innocent until proven
guilty. The freedoms listed above embody the traditional notion of "human rights". A broader
definition of human rights incorporates "second generation rights" which refer to social, economic
and cultural rights, including: The right to social security; The right to work; The right to rest and
leisure; The right to education. The right to participate in the cultural life of the community. The term
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"third generation rights" is sometimes used to refer to more recently debated concepts such as the
right to development and to a healthy environment. (Human Rights Education in the Formal
Educational System in Africa, 1999, pp. 4-5)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an aspirational document; no nation on Earth, including the United
States, meets this standard in its entirety. The United States does not guarantee a “right to leisure” or a “right to work.”
Law professor Ryan Goodman, expresses the concern that human rights abuses will become a cover for broader war
motives: “One of the principal obstacles to an internationally recognized right of humanitarian intervention is the concern
that aggressive states would use the pretext of humanitarianism to launch wars for ulterior motives. In the past few
decades, such prudential considerations have stymied the doctrinal development of humanitarian intervention. Leading
public international law scholars and the great majority of states -- including states that have engaged in humanitarian
intervention -- refuse to endorse the legality of UHI [unilateral humanitarian intervention] for fear of its abuse as a
pretext” (American Journal of International Law, Jan. 2006, p. 141). But affirmative debaters will argue that uncertainty
about the precise meaning of “human rights abuses” provides all the more reason to gravitate to the core – the concern
about the killing of innocent civilians. Donald Kommers, professor of government at Notre Dame, offers the following
view in the 1979 book, Human Rights and American Foreign Policy: “Although it is clear that not all people agree on the
range and importance of human rights, people do care about having fulfilled those basic rights relating to integrity of the
person and the value of life” (p. 81).
AFFIRMATIVE STRATEGIES
There are a number of excellent affirmative strategies available to the affirmative on this topic. The first
affirmative case focuses on genocide as a core concern among human rights abuses. Most nations, including the
United States, are members states of the Genocide Convention. The Convention commits all nations, including the
United States, to take action to prevent genocide.
The second affirmative case argues that United States intervention to stop human rights abuses is justified
because of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) framework. The members of the United Nations General Assembly
unanimously adopted the R2P framework in 2005 vote of the membership. This framework reinterprets national
sovereignty in such a way as to affirm the responsibility to protect human rights. When a nation fails to protect its own
citizens from human rights abuses, it agrees to accept assistance from other nations. The United States, as a
participant in the R2P framework, is justified in intervening in an attempt to stop human rights abuses. This
intervention will begin with “soft” measures such as “rule of law” education and targeted economic sanctions. If the
human rights abuse continues and becomes severe, the United States is justified in resorting to military intervention.
The final affirmative case justifies United States action to stop the abuse of human rights, even when the United
Nations refuses to give its approval. The United Nations lacks legitimacy as an arbiter of human rights issues. The
members of the UN Human Rights Council includes many of the world’s worse abusers of human rights. In addition,
two permanent members of the Security Council (Russia and China) consistently use their veto power to block action
against such obvious human rights abusers as Syria’s Bassar Al-Assad. Even in those rare instances where the
United Nations does agree to act against human rights abusers, it is incapable of acting with sufficient speed or
military power to stop the abuse. This case argues that the United States is a more capable and reliable defender of
human rights than is the United Nations.
NEGATIVE STRATEGIES
There are also many excellent strategies available to the negative on this topic. The first negative case argues
that the United States should refrain from humanitarian intervention as a matter of showing respect for national
sovereignty. For more than a century, colonial powers claimed their right to use their military might to subdue and
civilize native peoples. This colonial impulse has given way more recently to assertions of hegemonic power. More
often than not, human rights justifications for war have been a thin cover for less worthy motives.
The second negative case argues that human rights interventions are counterproductive; they end up increasing
the suffering for the very people we are trying to help. This problem of counterproductivity applies for economic
measures as well as for military interventions. Economic measures rarely punish the perpetrators of human rights
abuses; instead, they worsen conditions for civilian populations. Military interventions have an especially poor record
if the standard is the protection of innocent civilians. While some humanitarian interventions succeed in producing
regime change, such as in Libya, they often result in a power vacuum resulting in chaos and even greater human
rights abuses.
The final negative case defends the United Nations as the appropriate arbiter of interventions to stop human
rights abuses. Most affirmative cases focus on the incapability of the United Nations in taking military action because
of an absence of consensus in the Security Council. But this case argues that non-military instruments of
international law are effective – mechanisms such as the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal
Court, and special tribunals to investigate and prosecute severe abuses of human rights.
7
AFFIRMATIVE CASE #1: LIFE — GENOCIDE
The thesis of this case is that genocide is universally recognized as a gross violation of global human rights. It may
be the only act that people of every culture find clearly repugnant. The case argues that genocide is largely preventable.
Those who commit it base their decisions to do so on a cost-benefit calculus. They know that state sovereignty protects
them from interference. This causes tyrants to think they can succeed without having to pay for their crimes. When the
United States takes seriously the provisions of the Genocide Convention, it refuses to allow such tyrants the ability to
engage in genocide without paying a penalty. If there is a strong possibility that the United States will act against
genocide, there would probably be no need to act because very few potential tyrants would risk the consequences.
OBSERVATIONS:
I. PRESERVATION OF LIFE IS WIDELY ACCEPTED AS A CORE HUMAN VALUE.
[See Life Brief in The Value Debate Handbook]
Donald Kommers, (Prof., Gov't., U. Notre Dame) in HUMAN RIGHTS & AM. FOREIGN POLICY, 1979, 81.
Although it is clear that not all people agree on the range and importance of human rights, people do
care about having fulfilled those basic rights relating to integrity of the person and the value of life.
II. PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE HAS BEEN ACCEPTED BY MOST NATIONS AS AN ESSENTIAL CRITERIA
FOR THE AFFIRMATION OF THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE.
A. THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION CLEARLY DEFINES GENOCIDE AS AN ABUSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, TEXT OF THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION, Feb. 9,
2010. Retrieved Feb. 7, 2013 from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/genocide.htm.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: ( a ) Killing members of
the group; ( b ) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; ( c ) Deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
part; ( d ) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; ( e ) Forcibly transferring
children of the group to another group.
B. MOST NATIONS HAVE RATIFIED THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION.
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT ARE KEY,
Dec. 2008. Retrieved Feb. 7, 2013 from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Genocide
Convention.aspx.
As of today, 140 states have ratified the Genocide Convention. The High Commissioner says that
while the international community shares a collective responsibility to prevent genocide, individual states
have a primary role and a higher stake in putting a stop to the crime.
CONTENTIONS:
I. RECENT DECADES HAVE DEMONSTRATED THE NEED TO INTERVENE IN AN ATTEMPT TO STOP
GENOCIDE.
A. RWANDA PROVIDES AN EXAMPLE WHERE INTERVENTION WAS JUSTIFIED – THOUGH, IN THAT
CASE, NOT FORTHCOMING.
John Curley, (Editor), JOURNAL OF CATHOLIC LEGAL STUDIES, 2008, 395.
Over thirteen weeks in the spring of 1994, half a million people were slaughtered in the Rwandan
genocide. The Hutu-run government sponsored the systematic elimination of the minority Tutsi tribe;
according to one estimate, three-quarters of its population fell victim to the killing. Additionally, thousands
of Hutu perished for opposing the brutal campaign. The Human Rights Watch detailed the evolution of
the genocidal tactics: “In the first days of killing in Kigali, assailants sought out and murdered targeted
individuals and also went systematically from house to house in certain neighborhoods, killing Tutsi and
Hutu opposed to Habyarimana. Administrative officials, like the prefect of the city of Kigali, ordered local
people to establish barriers to catch Tutsi trying to flee and to organize search patrols to discover those
trying to hide. By the middle of the first week of the genocide, organizers began implementing a different
strategy: driving Tutsi out of their homes to government offices, churches, schools or other public sites,
where they would subsequently be massacred in large-scale operations.”
8
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 114-115.
The failure to provide humanitarian intervention in Rwanda is considered one of the worst
international mistakes in recent history. Five years after the killing began, President Clinton traveled to
Rwanda to apologize for not intervening, and he pledged that the United States would never again fail to
prevent such a catastrophe.
B. KOSOVO PROVIDES AN EXAMPLE WHERE INTERVENTION IN AN ATTEMPT TO STOP GENOCIDE
WAS JUSTIFIED.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 115.
The most commonly discussed example in recent memory of humanitarian intervention without
Security Council authorization, and without a self-defense justification, was NATO's intervention in
Kosovo in 1999. The Security Council had not authorized the intervention in Kosovo, but many argued
the need to use force was justified because of the humanitarian catastrophe committed by the Serbs in
Kosovo. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy,
among others, supported the intervention.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 115.
Despite not having Security Council approval for the intervention, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan
was supportive of NATO's campaign [in Kosovo]. He stated, "'there are times when the use of force may
be legitimate in the pursuit of peace.'" He went on to say that "'ethnic cleansers' and those 'guilty of gross
and shocking violations of human rights' will find no justification or refuge in the U.N. Charter."
C. DARFUR PROVIDES AN EXAMPLE WHERE INTERVENTION IN AN ATTEMPT TO STOP GENOCIDE
WAS JUSTIFIED.
Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2011, 138.
The UN referred to Darfur at the end of 2003 as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. By the
spring of 2004, mass atrocities and crimes against humanity were widely known to be occurring in
Darfur, and the number of “war affected” - (the UN’s term for those killed, raped, displaced,
malnourished, etc.) civilians stood at one million. By June 2005, the number had reached 2.9 million. In
seven years, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 civilians died, either from violence, war-- famine or
disease.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 117-118.
Sudan is the largest state in Africa. It has also been constantly immersed in civil wars since its
independence from Great Britain in 1956. The predominately Muslim government exists in the North,
while most of the non-Muslims, many of whom are Christian - mostly Catholics and Anglicans - reside in
the South. Since its independence, over two million people, mostly Christian, have been killed in the
conflict.
Donald Payne, (U.S. Rep., NJ), THE DETERIORATING PEACE IN SUDAN, House International Relations
Comm. Hrg., Sept. 20, 2006, 4.
While we have all heard of the staggering figures of the genocide, an estimated 400,000 killed and
more than 2 million displaced, countless rapes, continued suffering of millions of Darfurians, things are
only getting worse. And when you look at the history of Sudan with the north/south conflict, 4 million
displaced, 2 million dead, we wonder how long? Just how long? There is a renewed area of
bombardment in Darfur by the Sudanese Air Force. Attacks by the Janjaweed have increased. There
were nearly 500 rapes in one camp alone this summer. Humanitarian workers are unable to get into
many areas to provide the much needed services to the millions of innocent people caught in the futile
clash between militias, rebels, and government forces.
9
Silvestro Bakhiet, (San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition), THE DETERIORATING PEACE IN SUDAN,
House International Relations Comm. Hrg., Sept. 20, 2006, 73.
The situation in Darfur is man-made by the leadership of Islamic government in Khartoum. As many
as three hundred thousands lives have been lost. Over two million are internal displaced and many more
thousands cross the border to Chad with-out clean water, no shelter, no security and with no food. The
human crimes against black African people in the Darfur region are the worst in the world. The rape of
women, rape of young girls, burning of children in their parents' houses, destruction of property
throughout Darfur by the government-sponsored militia are the same tactics that have been used against
the people of South Sudan for the last twenty two years.
Ray Murphy, (Dir., Internat’l Peace Support Operations, Irish Center for Human Rights), IRISH TIMES, Jan.
5, 2007, 14.
It is estimated the conflict in Darfur has caused more than 200,000 deaths and created a
humanitarian crisis involving more than 2.5 million displaced persons. The conflict has spread to
neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. There have been harrowing reports of ethnic
cleansing, sexual violence and widespread attacks on the civilian population. Reports by reputable
organizations and individuals have condemned all parties to the conflict, especially the regime of Omar
Hassan al-Bashir currently in power in Khartoum. So why is responding to such crises so slow and
ineffectual?
D. LIBYA PROVIDES AN EXAMPLE WHERE INTERVENTION IN AN ATTEMPT TO STOP GENOCIDE WAS
JUSTIFIED.
James Pattison, (Prof., Politics, U. Manchester), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2010, viii.
Gaddafi indicated that his regime intended to commit a massacre in his now infamous “no mercy”
speech, where he called on his supporters to “go out and cleanse the city of Benghazi.” Moreover, by the
time the intervention was launched, the regime had already demonstrated its willingness to use force
against its own people.
II. THE UNITED STATES IS JUSTIFIED IN INTERVENING TO ATTEMPT TO STOP GENOCIDE.
A. THE UNITED STATES HAS RATIFIED THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION.
Emily Backus, (Journalist), On This Day: U.S. Fully Adopts Genocide Convention, Nov. 4, 2010. Retrieved
Feb. 6, 2013 from http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs/day-us-ratifies-genocide-convention.
Twenty-two years ago today – November 4, 1988 – the 40-year Senate battle over the ratification of
the United Nations’ Genocide Convention culminated in the signing of the Proxmire Act by President
Ronald Reagan at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. The Proxmire Act, officially the Genocide Convention
Implementation Act of 1987, bound the United States to the provisions of the United Nations’ Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
B. THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION HAS CALLED ON ALL MEMBER STATES TO TAKE ACTION TO
PREVENT GENOCIDE.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 121.
Article 1 of the Genocide Convention provides that contracting states have a duty to prevent
genocide. In practice, in 1993, with the outbreak of war in Bosnia, some argued that states have the duty
to prevent genocide. As Judge Lauterpacht wrote, "the duty to 'prevent' genocide is a duty that rests
upon all parties and is a duty owed by each party to every other [erga omnes]."
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 121-122.
The International Court of Justice ("ICJ") embraced this "responsibility to protect" for crimes of
genocide. The Court made this responsibility a treaty obligation for those states that ratified Genocide
Convention Article IX without reservation. Moreover, regarding the responsibility to protect, the Court
saw no distinction between genocide committed on a state's own soil and genocide committed
elsewhere. It is now clear that the duty to prevent genocide is not confined to a state's own territory.
10
C. THERE IS LITTLE RISK THAT THE UNITED STATES WILL INTERVENE IRRESPONSIBLY IN THE
ATTEMPT TO STOP GENOCIDE – INACTION IS THE GREATER RISK.
Mira Sorvino, (Stop Violence Against Women Campaign, Amnesty International), THE DETERIORATING
PEACE IN SUDAN, House International Relations Comm. Hrg., Sept. 20, 2006, 27.
But although the UN genocide convention requires of states to do all they can to prevent genocide
and to punish those responsible, we have acted with puzzling restraint. We have somehow been
reluctant to apply the kind of serious negative pressure on Sudan to create the cessation in atrocities that
we and the international community desire. And in the two year interval between the first official use of
that term and now, the death toll has risen from 50,000 people to hundreds of thousands. These figures
have turned a prescient early understanding of the situation into a morbidly fulfilled prophesy, with not a
small share of the responsibility in our own hands for not acting forcefully enough. As in the almost forty
years it took for us to ratify the Genocide Convention, our current pace of response to an acknowledged
dire situation has been shamefully slow.
Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2011, 54.
Frequently, the US is an indispensible mechanism for the effective use of force. Its decreased
interest in committing political and military resources to humanitarian protection then becomes
problematic, as has been the case since the inception of the “war on terror.”
Michael Byers, (Prof., International Law, U. of British Columbia), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL
OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2009, 385.
And as Byers and Chesterman explain: “States are not chomping at the bit to intervene in support of
human rights around the globe, prevented only by an intransigent Security Council and the absence of
clear criteria to intervene without its authority. The problem, instead, is the absence of the will to act at
all. In such circumstances, the primary goal must be to encourage states to see widespread and
systematic human rights violations as their concern too -- as part of their "national interest"-and to act
and act early to prevent them, stop them, or seek justice for them.”
III. OBJECTIONS TO INTERVENTION IN CASES OF GENOCIDE ARE UNPERSUASIVE.
A. MORAL JUSTIFICATION EXISTS ASIDE FROM THE LIKELIHOOD OF A SUCCESSFUL INTERVENTION.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 2.
How could we have said "never again" with so much conviction and confidence after the Holocaust
of the Second World War, and then again after the revelation of the horror of Cambodia, when up to two
million died in four years of tyrannical Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979? Now here we were, less
than twenty years later, with the Genocide Convention in place and with all our accumulated historical
experience, saying it again—and again. How, we asked ourselves with varying degrees of
incomprehension, horror, anger, and shame, could we possibly have let this all happen again?
B. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY DOES NOT SUPERSEDE THE MORAL JUSTIFICATION FOR ATTEMPTING
TO STOP GENOCIDE.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 128.
The old notions of sovereignty cannot be allowed to stand in the way of human rights. International
law is changing, and changing quickly. Genocide is rightfully considered the "crime of crimes," and
international law should reflect this. The law in most instances follows reason and prevailing morality,
and reason and morality call for greater intervention to prevent human rights catastrophes. The
pendulum is swinging this way after Sudan.
C. UNITED STATES INTERVENTION HAS A REASONABLE PROSPECT OF SUCCESS IN STOPPING
GENOCIDE.
Mathew Cooper, (Clerk, UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), DENVER JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLICY, Spr. 2012, 196-197.
With HI [humanitarian intervention], it is fairly simple to conclude that in some circumstances the use
of force will be the only way to stop genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity
-- the prevention of which unquestionably an essential interest of the international community.
11
Robert Art, (Prof., International Relations, Brandeis U.), A GRAND STRATEGY FOR AMERICA, 2003,
153-154.
A preventive deployment of 5,000 well-armed Western troops would have had a good chance of
preventing the mass murder from starting in the capital, or of quickly stopping it there and keeping it from
spreading to the countryside. Even if troops were not in place when the killing began, he calculates that a
rapid deployment of one American division could still have saved about 125,000 of the Tutsis and
moderate Hutus that were killed." Finally, the evidence is clear that in the Rwanda case, like most other
cases of mass murder in the twentieth century, a relatively small number of high political and military
elites planned these slaughters.
Michael O'Hanlon, (Sr. Analyst, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings Institution), EXPANDING GLOBAL
MILITARY CAPACITY FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION, 2003, 13-14.
In many cases, rapid and assertive intervention can succeed in quelling conflict, provided that
policymakers are prepared to act on compelling evidence when it is presented to them. Even in Rwanda,
the robust and prompt deployment of force could have made a major difference. Before the genocide
began, a robust preventive force could have been effective. After the genocide began, the very act of
beginning a deployment might have affected the behavior of the locals and persuaded them to desist or
to scatter out of fear of retribution. Even if a preventive deployment had not been tried, intervention after
the genocide began could have saved 200,000 or more victims. This calculation is based on the
conservative assumption that an intervening force could have arrived by mid-May if a decision to
intervene had occurred by mid- to late-April and on conservative assumptions about how quickly a force
could have been airlifted into Rwanda.
D. UNWILLINGNESS TO INTERVENE MAKES GENOCIDE MORE LIKELY.
Norman Cigar (Prof., Nat'l. Security Studies, U.S. Marine Corps School of Advanced Warfighting) in
GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA, 1995, 5.
Extensive literature exists on the phenomenon of genocide in general and on the holocaust in
particular. One of its main objectives has been to analyze the variables that may trigger or facilitate this
process. Although each scenario is unique, genocide is most likely to occur if the perpetrators regard it
as a rational, cost-effective strategy in pursuit of broader, concrete objectives. For this attitude to
develop, however, the appropriate values and perspective that are conducive to genocide need to shift
significantly, if they are not already in harmony. Top-down leadership and official legitimization were key
factors for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and they are considerably more significant as a motivating force than
history or tradition.
E. ECONOMIC MEASURES ALONE ARE INSUFFICIENT TO STOP GENOCIDE.
Elisabeth Kidder, (Dir., Survivors United to Save the Women of Darfur), SUDAN: CONSOLIDATING
PEACE WHILE CONFRONTING GENOCIDE, House Comm. on International Relations Hrg., June 22,
2005, 48.
In an article published in the New York Times in April 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked,
“We know what is happening in Darfur. The question is, why are we not doing more to put an end to it?”
Annan continued: “[G]iving aid without protection is like putting a Band-Aid on an open wound. Unarmed
aid workers, while vitally necessary, cannot defend civilians from murder, rape or violent attack. Our
collective failure to provide a much larger force is as pitiful and inexcusable as the consequences are
grave for the tens of thousands of families who are left unprotected.”
F. WILLINGNESS TO INTERVENE IS NECESSARY FOR THE PROMOTION OF DIPLOMATIC SUCCESS IN
STOPPING GENOCIDE.
Brian Lepard, (Prof., Law, U. Nebraska), RETHINKING HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION, 2002, 230-231.
For three and a half years in Bosnia and Herzegovina, people promoted talks, and for three and [a]
half years, the war, the genocide, the aggression and the ethnic cleansing continued. Only after military
intervention took place did diplomacy succeed. " In hindsight, Secretary-General Annan declared in
1999: "When decisive action was finally taken by UNPROFOR in August and September 1995, it helped
to bring the war to a conclusion."
Brian Lepard, (Prof., Law, U. Nebraska), RETHINKING HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION, 2002, 244.
By helping prevent large-scale bloodshed, forcible intervention can support negotiations for a
peaceful settlement. Mass killings that are left unchecked only exacerbate tensions and reinforce the
determination of the parties to fight on, as Rwanda and Kosovo so graphically demonstrated. Moreover,
as the experience in Bosnia suggested, threats that are not backed up by military force may prolong the
posturing of the parties, rather than encourage good faith negotiations.
12
AFFIRMATIVE CASE #2: RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (R2P)
The thesis of this case is that justice is best served when the United States fulfills its responsibility to protect (R2P)
the human rights of citizens around the globe. In determining how national sovereignty is to be weighed against the
protection of human rights, all nations have agreed to a formula that properly balances those factors. The responsibility
to protect human rights falls first on each nation to protect the human rights of its own citizenry. When national leaders
fail in that obligation, all other nations are justified in filling the gap left by that failure to provide protection. The R2P
formula calls for the use of economic and diplomatic measures in an effort to promote compliance with international
human rights norms. Only in the most extreme cases will military intervention be justified.
OBSERVATIONS:
I. JUSTICE IS THE STANDARD FOR DETERMINING WHAT ACTS ARE JUSTIFIED IN STOPPING HUMAN
RIGHTS ABUSES.
[See Justice Brief in The Value Debate Handbook]
Helmut Reifeld, (Head of Overseas Offices, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung – a German Think Tank), WE HAVE
JUSTICE IN COMMON, 2008, 7.
Justice is a core value not only in the fields of theology, law and political philosophy, but also in
politics, social life and economics. It is a value that generates other values.
II. FULFILLING THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF CITIZENS IS THE
APPROPRIATE CRITERION FOR JUSTICE.
A. THE 2005 “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” (R2P) COMPACT SOUGHT AN AGREED-UPON
BALANCING OF SOVEREIGNTY AND HUMAN RIGHTS.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 2-3.
Throughout the decade, a fierce argument raged between, on the one hand, advocates of
"humanitarian intervention"—the doctrine that there was a "right to intervene" militarily in these cases,
against the will of the government of the country in question—and, on the other hand, defenders of the
traditional prerogatives of state sovereignty, who insisted that internal events were none of the rest of the
world's business. There was ample room, conceptually, to find common ground between these extremes,
but no one seemed able to locate or articulate it: the verbal trench warfare, in the UN General Assembly
and elsewhere, became ever more intense, and the inability to agree on an appropriate response to each
of these situations as they arose became ever more frustrating and damaging. The breakthrough came
with the emergence in 2001 of the concept of the responsibility to protect and its subsequent unanimous
embrace by the General Assembly, meeting at head of state and government level, in 2005. This turned
"right to intervene" language on its head, focusing not on any rights of the great and powerful to throw
their weight around but rather on the responsibility of all states to meet the needs of the utterly
powerless. In the first instance, the responsibility to protect a country's people from mass atrocity crimes
lay with its own government; but if it proved unable or unwilling to do so, a wider responsibility lay with
other members of the international community to assist preventively and, if necessary, react effectively.
Jonathan Horowitz, (Staff, Open Society Justice Initiative), HUMAN RIGHTS BRIEF, Apr. 10, 2012.
Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013 from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2038042.
Within this context, the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine (commonly referred to as R2P) emerged
as a means to locate an appropriate legal balance between state sovereignty and human rights. Only
recently formulated, the R2P doctrine seeks to ensure that states respond to the human needs of people
within their territory or under their control, and to codify international responsibility to protect a state’s
citizens in the event the state fails to fulfill its domestic obligations. In doing so, the R2P doctrine makes
considerable contributions to defining state responsibilities under both human rights and international
law.
James Pattison, (Prof., Politics, U. Manchester), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2010, 4.
More generally, the development of the responsibility to protect has been hailed by Ramesh Thakur
and Thomas Weiss as the most dramatic development of our time – comparable to the Nuremberg trials
and the 1948 Convention on Genocide and by historian Martin Gilbert as the most significant adjustment
to national sovereignty in 360 years.
13
B. THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” COMPACT HAS BEEN UNANIMOUSLY EMBRACED BY ALL
MEMBERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 31.
Less than four years later, "R2P" was formally and unanimously embraced by the UN General
Assembly meeting at the head of state and government level at the 2005 World Summit.
James Pattison, (Prof., Politics, U. Manchester), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2010, 3.
th
Most notably, at the 2005 UN World Summit (the High-Level Plenary meeting of the 60 session of
the General Assembly, with over 160 heads of state and government in attendance), states agreed that
there exists a universal responsibility to protect populations. In doing so, they indicated their
preparedness to undertake action should peaceful means be inadequate and when national authorities
are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity. On the face of it, this agreement was something of a watershed moment for
humanitarian intervention. It seemed to mark the worldwide acceptance of the responsibility to intervene
in response to the mass violation of basic human rights.
Mark Malloch Brown, (Chief of Staff, UN Secretary-General), UNITED NATIONS RHETORIC OR
REFORM: OUTCOME OF THE HIGH–LEVEL EVENT, House International Relations Comm. Hrg., Sept.
28, 2005, 42.
Please don't overlook the very important progress the summit did make on other areas of human
rights—notably the "responsibility to protect". For the first time the entire UN membership, at the highest
level, has accepted clearly that it has a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. I believe this is a historic decision, which can help
us to respond more rapidly, and more effectively, to the Bosnias and Rwandas, and indeed the Darfurs,
of the future. Of course it's a decision in principle. An enormous political effort will still be needed to
ensure that we act on this principle in specific situations. But no one can argue any longer that such
horrific crimes are internal affairs, which concern only the people and government of the nation in which
they happen. In that respect, at least, we have entered a new and better era.
CONTENTIONS:
I. THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” COMPACT JUSTIFIES INTERVENTION WHEN NATIONS FAIL TO
PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS.
A. NATIONS ABROGATE THEIR SOVEREIGNTY RIGHTS WHEN THEY SERIOUSLY VIOLATE THE
HUMAN RIGHTS OF THEIR OWN PEOPLE.
Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2011, 5.
The R2P framework addresses the “moral imbalance” between sovereignty and human rights, and
suggests that approaching sovereignty as responsibility answers this moral inadequacy. Essentially, the
right to interfere in a state where extreme violations of human rights are taking place comes from the
failure of that state to meet its responsibilities as a sovereign member of the international community.
Julia Hoffman, (Prof., International Relations, U. for Peace, Costa Rica), RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT:
FROM PRINCIPLE TO PRACTICE, 2012, 14.
The proponents of the principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) believe that it can provide a way
out of the deadlock in the debate on humanitarian intervention by reframing the debate in terms of
‘responsibility’ rather than ‘rights’. First, it defines state sovereignty as implying the responsibility of every
state to protect its population from human rights abuses, a definition that carries with it the implication
that a state’s failure to exercise its sovereign duty to protect leads to a corresponding diminution of its
right to non-interference by outside forces. Second, it asserts a ‘responsibility’ on the part of the
international community to support states to provide protection and, ultimately, to intervene when they
fail to provide the necessary protection.
14
B. THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY HAS A RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS WHEN
SOVEREIGNTY FAILS.
Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2011, 4.
State sovereignty entails responsibility and, therefore, each state has a responsibility to protect its
citizens from mass killings and other gross violations of their rights. If that state is unable or unwilling to
carry out that function, the state abrogates its sovereignty, and the responsibility to protect falls to the
international community. Two aspects of the R2P framework are, thus, key: state sovereignty as
responsibility, and international responsibility in egregious circumstances.
Philip Cunliffe, (Prof., Politics, U. Kent), CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE RESPONSIBILITY TO
PROTECT INTERROGATING THEORY AND PRACTICE, 2011, 51.
In its most basic form, the ‘responsibility to protect’ holds that if a state is unable or unwilling to
discharge its obligation to protect individuals against gross human rights violations then the ‘onus of
[such] protection falls by default upon the broader international community, which is then called upon to
step in and help, or . . . even coerce States to put in place the requisite web of protection’. (ellipsis in
original)
Ray Murphy, (Dir., Irish Center for Human Rights), IRISH TIMES, Jan. 5, 2007, 14.
According to the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty,
the primary responsibility for the protection of a population lies with the state itself. The report formulated
a policy that when a population is suffering serious harm as a result of armed conflict, repression or state
failure, and the state is unwilling or unable to halt or avert it, the principle of non-intervention yields to the
international responsibility to protect.
C. EVEN WHEN THE UNITED NATIONS APPROVES INTERVENTION, IT FALLS TO INDIVIDUAL
NATIONS, SUCH AS THE U.S., TO ACTUALLY IMPLEMENT THE INTERVENTION.
James Pattison, (Prof., Politics, U. Manchester), RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT: FROM PRINCIPLE TO
PRACTICE, 2012, 173.
First, RtoP doctrine does not clearly identify which international actor should intervene. Most
versions of RtoP require the United Nations (UN) Security Council to authorize intervention, but this does
not identify any particular agent to undertake the action. The problem, as David Miller notes, is one of
diffused responsibility. That is, RtoP doctrine asserts a general duty that falls on the international
community to do something when the state where the humanitarian crisis is occurring is manifestly failing
to tackle the crisis, but does not outline who, in particular, should act.
Sean Murphy, (Prof., Law, George Washington U.), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2009, 344.
Virtually all states, key non-state actors, and scholars agree that humanitarian intervention may
proceed when authorized by the U.N. Security Council.
II. THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” ACCORD ENVISIONS A BROAD RANGE OF INTERVENTIONS, UP
TO AND INCLUDING MILITARY ACTION.
A. SOFT INTERVENTION MEASURES ARE PREFERRED BEFORE MILITARY INTERVENTION.
Adam Jones, (Research Fellow, Genocide Studies Program, Yale U.), GENOCIDE: A COMPREHENSIVE
INTRODUCTION, 2006, 393.
Economic and political sanctions lie at an intermediate point between "soft" intervention strategies
and military intervention. As The Responsibility to Protect summarized such measures, they may include
"arms embargoes," "ending military cooperation and training programmes," "financial sanctions,"
"restrictions on income-generating activities such as oil, diamonds . . . logging and drugs," "restrictions
on access to petroleum products," "aviation bans," "restrictions on diplomatic representation,"
"restrictions on travel," and "suspension of membership or expulsion from international or regional
bodies." To this list might be added the application of judicial sanctions, such as indictments for war
crimes and genocide. (ellipsis in original)
James Pattison, (Prof., Politics, U. Manchester), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2010, viii.
Humanitarian intervention is only one of the potential means available: the [R2P] doctrine comprises
a gamut of diplomatic, non-military, and military options before, during, and after a humanitarian crisis,
and humanitarian intervention typically falls only under pillar three of the doctrine’s three pillars outlined
by the Secretary-General in his 2009 report, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect.
15
B. THE UNITED STATES TRAINS DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN “RULE OF LAW” PROTECTION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS.
Fran Quigley, (Prof., Law, Indiana U. School of Law), COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW, Fall
2009, 25.
The U.S. General Accounting Office (which changed its name to the U.S. Government Accountability
Office in 2004) reported in 1999 that the U.S. alone had spent $ 970 million on rule of law programming,
much of it in Latin America, in just one five-year period in the 1990s. USAID reported that it spent $ 14.3
million on "rule of law and human rights" in 2007. These agencies have claimed that their rule of law
programming addresses not only economic development and human rights, but also poverty,
democratization, and peacemaking.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 96-97.
The promotion of human rights requires a multifaceted approach, including investigating and
documenting human rights abuses; funding and assisting in the creation of sustainable local institutions
capable of defending human rights and monitoring violations; training and educating local human rights
advocates; training and educating local police and judicial officials; assisting in setting up appropriate
judicial bodies to prosecute violations; and assisting in tracking down suspected human rights abusers.
C. “NAMING AND SHAMING” VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS A “SOFT” FORM OF INTERVENTION.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 90.
Direct preventive diplomacy is normally thought of as a "soft" technique, but it does have a harder
end. Threats of political sanctions—that is, diplomatic isolation, suspension of organization membership,
travel and asset restrictions on targeted persons, "naming and shaming," or other such actions—are part
of the diplomatic toolkit and have their place if, but only if, softer approaches fail.
D. ECONOMIC INCENTIVES ARE PREFERRED OVER ECONOMIC SANCTIONS.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 94.
David Cortright identifies what is probably, at the end of the day, the major advantage of incentives
over sanctions: their greater sensitivity to some of the basic realities of human psychology. "Incentives
foster cooperation and goodwill, whereas sanctions create hostility and separation. Threats tend to
generate reactions of fear, anxiety and resistance, whereas the normal responses to a promise or reward
are hope, reassurance and attraction. Threats send a message of 'indifference or active hostility'. . .
whereas promises 'convey an impression of sympathy and concern." (ellipsis in original)
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 95.
Economic incentives, by contrast, are winning more sympathetic interest as a conflict prevention tool.
Positive inducements can take such forms as the promise or delivery of better trade terms, new
investment, more favorable taxation treatment, access to technology, and lifting existing negative
sanctions.
E. WHEN ECONOMIC SANCTIONS ARE USED, THEY CAN BE PRECISELY TARGETED.
Adam Jones, (Research Fellow, Genocide Studies Program, Yale U.), GENOCIDE: A COMPREHENSIVE
INTRODUCTION, 2006, 394.
Appropriately targeted measures, however, may repress would-be genocidaires. These actions can
include freezing of bank accounts; travel bans; and (more controversially) sporting, cultural, and
academic boycotts.
F. THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT” COMPACT USES MILITARY INTERVENTION ONLY WHEN ALL
OTHER OPTIONS HAVE FAILED.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 213.
The responsibility to protect, as has been made clear over and again through the course of this
volume, should only involve the use of coercive military force as a last resort: when no other options are
available, it is the right thing to do morally and practically, and this is lawful under the UN Charter.
16
AFFIRMATIVE CASE #3: MORALITY
The thesis of this case is that the United States is uniquely justified in taking action to stop mass killing of innocents
because it alone has the means to take effective action. Advocates of strict adherence to international law standards
argue that only the United Nations can legally authorize action to stop human rights abuses. But this case will
demonstrate that the United Nations is incapable of taking action to stop mass killing of innocents. The United States is
morally justified in taking action rather than to stand idly by and watch the mass killing of citizens.
OBSERVATION:
I. MORALITY IS THE VALUE THAT SHOULD DETERMINE WHETHER AN ACTION IS JUSTIFIED.
A. POLITICAL ACTION SHOULD BE GUIDED BY BASIC STANDARDS OF MORALITY.
Paul Formosa, (Prof., Philosophy, U. Queensland), KANT ON THE RELATION OF MORALS TO
POLITICS, 2008. Retrieved Feb. 8, 2013 from http://philpapers.org/rec/FORAPM.
Kant argues not simply that politics ought not to conflict with morals, but that politics properly
conceived cannot conflict with morals. This is because politics is primarily (but not only) the instantiation
of right in practice via the necessary means of the free and open use of public reason. Morality demands
nothing less. While there can be a “subjective” conflict between morals and the likes of self-interest,
prudence, passions, or ideology, there cannot be an “objective” conflict between morals and politics,
because politics is primarily about right and not about self-interest, prudence, passions, or ideology
Ahmed Rashid, (U. of Ottawa), IS HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION EVER MORALLY JUSTIFIED?, Mar.
13, 2012. Retrieved Feb. 8, 2013 from http://www.e-ir.info/2012/03/13/is-humanitarian-intervention-evermorally-justified/.
The basic principle of common morality states that humans have rights not as member of particular
community, but as members of human community and there is a common moral world. It is stripped of
religious, legal connotations, customs and mores of particular communities; therefore it is minimal
morality. The ideas stem from critical reflection on laws and customs, and based on ‘reason’. The
assumption is that human are choosing and rational beings. And more importantly there are established
standards by which everybody ought to live. Each person must respect the agency of others, the
principle of respect, and must support one another in appropriate ways (the idea of beneficence).
B. TAKING ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE IS MORALLY JUSTIFIED.
Madeleine Albright & William Cohen, (Former U.S. Secretary of State/Former U.S. Secretary of Defense),
NEW YORK TIMES, Nov. 21, 2008. Retrieved Feb. 8, 2013 from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/
21/opinion/21iht-edalbright.1.18844104.html?_r=0.
We are keenly aware that the incoming president's agenda will be daunting from day one. But
preventing genocide and mass atrocities is not an idealistic addition to our core foreign policy agenda. It
is a moral and strategic imperative.
Jackie Berkowitz, (Communications Office, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum), AMERICANS BELIEVE
GENOCIDE IS PREVENTABLE, US HAS MAJOR ROLE IN PREVENTION, July 24, 2012. Retrieved Feb.
8, 2013 from http://www.ushmm.org/museum/press/archives/detail.php?category=03-coc&content=201207-24.
“The results are striking in that they show a deep American concern for genocide and a strong
desire for global action to face this threat,” said Mark Penn, former presidential pollster and CEO of
Burson-Marsteller and Penn Schoen Berland. “Americans believe they have a moral responsibility to
prevent or stop genocide around the world, even if it means putting boots on the ground.
David Rieff, (Policy Analyst, Hoover Institution), POLICY REVIEW, Feb. 1, 2011. Retrieved Feb. 8, 2013
from http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/64261.
An end to genocide: It is an attractive prospect, not to mention a morally unimpeachable goal in
which Kantian moral absolutism meets American can do-ism, where the post-ideological methodologies
(which are anything but post-ideological, of course) of international lawyers meet the American elite’s
faith, which goes back at least to Woodrow Wilson if not much earlier in the history of the republic, that
we really can right any wrong if only we commit ourselves sufficiently to doing so.
17
CONTENTIONS:
I. THE UNITED NATIONS IS INCAPABLE OF TAKING ACTION TO STOP GENOCIDE.
A. THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION INCLUDES MANY HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
AS ITS MEMBERS.
Brett Schaefer, (Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs, Heritage Foundation), HERITAGE
FOUNDATION WEB MEMO, June 10, 2005, 2.
The U.N. Commission on Human Rights is rightly regarded as epitomizing the "dictators' debating
club" esthetic that some ascribe to the whole organization. Recent members of the Commission include
Libya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, China, and Cuba—all of which are known for their deplorable records on
human rights. Like clockwork, the Commission issues regular resolutions condemning Israel while
overlooking real offenders—such as many of its members.
Brett Schaefer, (Fellow, International Regulatory Affairs, Heritage Foundation), THE UNITED NATIONS
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL: REFORM OR REGRESSION? House International Relations Comm. Hrg.,
Sept. 6, 2006, 38.
U.N. treaties, such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which the General Assembly
passed in 1948, form the core of international standards for human rights. Yet the U.N.'s record in
promoting fundamental human rights in recent times has been one of failure and inaction. No institution
illustrated this failing more than the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. As the premier human rights
body in the U.N. system, the CHR was charged with holding "public meetings to review the human rights
performance of States, [adopting] new standards and [promoting] human rights around the world." Sadly,
the CHR devolved into a feckless organization that human rights abusers use to block criticism or action
to promote human rights. Two prominent examples of politicization and the selectivity by the Commission
are: Countries with poor human rights records successfully sought out seats on the Commission to block
scrutiny. For instance, members with dubious human rights records elected to the Commission in recent
years included Algeria, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Vietnam and
Zimbabwe. Libya served as chairman of the Commission in 2003, despite its ties to the Lockerbie airliner
bombing and its own domestic human rights abuses.4 The U.S. ambassador walked out of the
Commission in 2004 after Sudan's election to the commission despite its role in Darfur. As noted by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "the Commission's capacity to perform its tasks has been increasingly
undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism. In particular, States have sought membership
of the Commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to
criticize others."
B. THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL BLOCKS EFFECTIVE ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE.
Mathew Cooper, (Clerk, UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda), DENVER JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLICY, Spr. 2012, 199.
In some situations, the only thing standing between preventing genocide and standing idly by while a
Rwanda-type situation unfolds is the unwillingness of a P5 member to give its vote. Following the
absolutist argument, then, it is conceivable that there could be a circumstance in which 191 members of
the UN were in favor of intervention, but because China, for example, vetoed action, it would be
automatically illegal.
Sean Murphy, (Prof., Law, George Washington U.), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2009, 351.
An important component in the diversity of views on this issue concerns the role of the Security
Council. Proponents of unilateral humanitarian intervention view the Council as an unreliable arbiter of
the legality of uses of force, since some permanent members have been willing to block actions that a
majority on the Security Council sees as appropriate. Again, the Kosovo incident presents the dilemma;
many Security Council members favored armed intervention to protect Kosovar Albanians, but Russia
(along with China) opposed doing so.
C. THE UNITED NATIONS IS INCAPABLE OF TAKING TIMELY ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE.
Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2011, 71.
Even in instances when the Security Council does consider authorizing intervention, it is usually
facing a major problem, namely the slowness of its decision-- making process and the use of veto by the
permanent members (P5) of the Security Council, which averts intervention from taking place within the
right time frame to save lives.
18
D. THE UNITED NATIONS HAS A DEPLORABLE HISTORY OF INACTION IN THE FACE OF GENOCIDE.
Adam Jones, (Research Fellow, Genocide Studies Program, Yale U.), GENOCIDE: A COMPREHENSIVE
INTRODUCTION, 2006, 394.
The UN has an abysmal record in confronting and forestalling genocide. According to Leo Kuper and
others, this reflects the organization's foundation on Westphalian norms of state sovereignty, and the
desire of most member states to avoid shining a spotlight on their own atrocities, past or present.
Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2011, 1.
Beginning in April 1994 and lasting for ninety days, Tutsis and moderate Hutus became the victims
of a systematic genocidal campaign that resulted in 800,000 deaths in Rwanda. In July 1995, with United
Nations (UN) peacekeepers present, 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were massacred in the safe haven of
Srebrenica over a few days.
Fran Quigley, (Prof., Law, Indiana U. School of Law), COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW, Fall
2009, 13.
The international community's efforts to promote the rule of law and human rights in developing
countries have been largely unsuccessful. This record of disappointment is typically attributed to a lack of
political will for reform in the host societies. As a result, an estimated four billion people worldwide are
without access to human rights, and suffer without recourse from discrimination, theft, and other forms of
physical and emotional harm.
Nile Gardiner, (Fellow in Security Policy, Heritage Foundation), SCANDAL-PLAGUED U.N. NEEDS NEW
LEADERSHIP, Sept. 13, 2005, 1.
As world leaders gather in New York to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations, there is little
to celebrate. Founded in 1945 with lofty ambitions to advance peace, prosperity and security in the
world, the United Nations can point to few significant achievements. Yet its failures, from its inability to
stop genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia to widespread abuses by U.N. peacekeepers across Africa, are
legion. Inaction, incompetence and even abject inhumanity have all too often been the hallmarks of U.N.
operations, which have frequently demonstrated a callous indifference to human suffering.
II. THE UNITED STATES ALONE HAS THE MEANS TO TAKE EFFECTIVE ACTION AGAINST GENOCIDE.
A. THE UNITED STATES IS THE WORLD’S LONE SUPERPOWER.
Sean Murphy, (Prof., Law, George Washington U.), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2009, 351.
Another important component in the debate over unilateral humanitarian intervention concerns the
current status of the United States in international affairs. The United States is the preeminent military,
diplomatic, economic, political, and cultural power in the world. The United States can marshal the
resources needed for humanitarian intervention around the globe in a way that is largely not available to
any other state.
Amos Guiora, (Prof., Law, U. of Utah College of Law), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2011, 275.
In addition -- as a reality of contemporary geo-politics -- in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall,
there is only one superpower in the world today. To be a superpower requires both military and moral
leadership.
B. ONLY THE U.S. CAN ACT WITH THE NECESSARY SPEED TO PREVENT GENOCIDE.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 219.
If the proper standard of comparison is the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, which can be anywhere in
the world in three days, there is obviously some distance to go if there is to be any confidence that the
capability exists elsewhere to halt a quickly spreading, large-scale genocide. The EU's 1,500-strong
battlegroups are targeted to be deployed to crisis regions outside Europe, as needed, within fifteen days
from decision, and the goals of the other organizations are either inexplicit (as with the new NATO
Response Force) or even more modest. The UN's target of deployment within thirty to ninety days is
clearly too slow in these situations.
19
C. UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPERS ARE INCAPABLE OF ACTING EFFECTIVELY TO STOP
GENOCIDE.
Tim Docking, (African Affairs Specialist, U.S. Institute of Peace), TAKING SIDES: CLASHING VIEWS ON
AFRICAN ISSUES, 2007, 371.
The United Nations currently lacks the resources to effectively fulfill its peacekeeping mission. This
point also makes clear the UN's lack of independence and inability to assume a leadership role in
international crisis situations. Indeed, conference participants pointed out that the United Nations is a
body that is in constant search of material and financial support and coherent political backing from
member states.
Sara Dillon, (Prof., Law, Suffolk U.), MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL
LAW, 2012, 194.
There is no international military to respond to the phenomenon of mass killings by a state or by nonstate actors, and in situations of political collapse this often leaves the most vulnerable populations at the
mercy of extremely violent forces.
III. RULE OF LAW OR LEGALITY IS AN INSUFFICIENT RESPONSE TO GENOCIDE.
A. THE RULE OF LAW STANDARD ACTUALLY ENDORSES THE AUTHORITARIAN RULE THAT MAKES
GENOCIDE POSSIBLE.
Fran Quigley, (Prof., Law, Indiana U. School of Law), COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW, Fall
2009, 20.
The rule of law is just one of the virtues which a legal system may possess and by which it is to be
judged. It is not to be confused with democracy, justice, equality (before the law or otherwise) human
rights of any kind or the respect for persons or for the dignity of man. A non-democratic legal system,
based on the denial of human rights, on extensive poverty, on racial segregation, sexual inequalities, and
religious persecution may, in principle, conform to the requirements of the rule of law better than any of
the legal systems of the more enlightened Western democracies. This does not mean that it will be better
than those Western democracies. It will be an immeasurably worse legal system, but it will excel in one
respect: in its conformity to the rule of law.
B. AN ACTION TO STOP GENOCIDE CAN BE JUSTIFIED, EVEN THOUGH NOT LEGAL UNDER
INTERNATIONAL LAW.
Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2011, 63-64.
A quick overview of the record of humanitarian interventions since the early 1990s suggests a
growing acceptance of military operations undertaken without explicit UN authorization. Not only have
such interventions been tolerated, but they have also been embraced in most of the humanitarian crises
of the 1990s. Large sections of the international community regarded these interventions as legitimate,
despite the lack of prior UN authorization.
J.L. Holzgrefe & Robert Keohane, (Professors, Political Science, Duke U.), HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION: ETHICAL, LEGAL AND POLITICAL DILEMMAS, 2003, 154-155.
In fact, it appears that some who were sympathetic to NATO's intervention in Kosovo, including UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, believed that this intervention was supported by one of the most morally
defensible fundamental principles of the international legal system, the obligation to protect human
rights, even though it was inconsistent with another principle of the system, the norm of sovereignty
understood as prohibiting intervention in the domestic affairs of the Former Yugoslav Republic.
Sean Murphy, (Prof., Law, George Washington U.), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2009, 350.
Along this line, an Independent International Commission on Kosovo, initiated by Sweden shortly
after the Kosovo incident and chaired by former South African Justice Richard Goldstone, issued a report
stating that the NATO military intervention was illegal under international law, because it did not have the
consent of the Security Council, but was "legitimate," both from a political and moral point of view.
Similarly, an International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) (established by the
Government of Canada) issued a December 2001 report, entitled The Responsibility to Protect, which
sought to provide a legal and ethical foundation for humanitarian intervention. The report asserted that a
responsibility to protect (or "R2P") exists under international law.
20
C. SOVEREIGNTY MUST GIVE WAY TO HUMAN RIGHTS PROTECTION IN CASES SUCH AS GENOCIDE.
Bertrand Ramcharan, (Assistant Secretary-General & Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights,
United Nations), THE SECURITY COUNCIL AND THE PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 2002, 7-8.
Speaking at a seminar of the International Peace Academy in New York on the report, Mr. Annan
said the title itself embodied the idea he had put forward in a 1999 speech to the UN General Assembly
on safe-guarding the sanctity of life: "As your report notes, I sought to develop the idea of two notions of
sovereignty: one for States, another for individuals," he told the seminar. "This idea was rooted firmly in
the UN Charter which affirms the sovereignty of States even as it challenges us to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war." The Secretary-General pointed out that when the sovereignty of
States conflicted with the sovereignty of individuals, "we as an international community need to think
hard about how far we will go to defend the former over the latter." He stressed that human rights would
have little meaning "if a principle guarded by States were always allowed to trump the protection of
citizens within them."
Brian Lepard, (Prof., Law, U. Nebraska), RETHINKING HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION, 2002, 59.
The principle that it is ethically desirable for individuals to identify with and associate with lesser
communities and the principle that all human beings have equal rights and dignity as members of one
human family suggest that the institution of government is legitimate as a means of fostering cooperation
among members of various communities. They simultaneously suggest that one of the most important
functions of governments, and authorities in general, is to uphold the rights and dignity of community
members. That is, those individuals or institutions which enjoy power have ethical duties to act as
trustees for the benefit of the community members over whom they exercise such power and to respect
and protect their human rights. This means that the sovereignty of states must necessarily be limited by
these fundamental ethical duties.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 11.
It has taken a desperately long time for the idea to take hold that mass atrocities are the world's
business: that they cannot be universally ignored and that sovereignty is not a license to kill.
J.L. Holzgrefe & Robert Keohane, (Professors, Political Science, Duke U.), HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION: ETHICAL, LEGAL AND POLITICAL DILEMMAS, 2003, 110.
The value of sovereignty is problematic unless it is understood as an instrumental good, that is, as a
means to other more fundamental ends. The gross violation of human rights is not only an obvious
assault on the dignity of persons, but a betrayal of the principle of sovereignty itself.
James Sutterlin, (Prof., International Studies, Yale U.), THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE MAINTENANCE
OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY: A CHALLENGE TO BE MET, 2nd Ed., 2003, 89.
In his 1991 Annual Report to the General Assembly, Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar wrote, "I
believe that the protection of human rights has now become one of the keystones of the arch of Peace."
And, further, "the case for not impinging on the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence
of States is indubitably strong. But it would only be weakened if it were to carry the implication that
sovereignty, even in this day and age, includes the right of mass slaughter or the launching of systematic
campaigns of decimation or forced exodus of civilian populations in the name of controlling civil strife and
insurrection."
John Curley, (Editor), JOURNAL OF CATHOLIC LEGAL STUDIES, 2008, 402.
To some theorists, humanitarian intervention is troublesome, because it offends the notion of
sovereignty that underlies the international system. Nevertheless, theorists justify intervention in extreme
cases by recognizing a universal quality to human rights that predates sovereignty's place as the
bedrock of international law. Thomas Aquinas characterized "just cause" as one in which "the enemy
deserves to have war waged against it because of some wrong it has inflicted."
Peter Stearns, (Prof., History, George Mason U.), WORLD CIVILIZATIONS: THE GLOBAL EXPERIENCE,
2003, 953.
Human Rights: Certain universal rights many argue should be enjoyed by all people because they
are justified by a moral standard that stands above the laws of any individual nation.
21
NEGATIVE CASE #1: JUSTICE
The thesis of this case is that respect for national sovereignty is the appropriate standard that should guide United
States foreign policy. Recent history has been replete with examples of unjust wars waged ostensibly for the protection
of human rights. Yet vague definitions of human rights have provided license for intervention at the whim of powerful
nations. In the nineteenth century, colonial powers justified interventions throughout the globe, claiming a right to bring
“civilization” to backward peoples. Twenty-first century interventions have been marked by inconsistent application of
supposedly moral directives. In each case, powerful nations have used the language of human rights as a pretext for
advancing their own national interests.
OBSERVATIONS:
I. JUSTICE IS THE STANDARD FOR DETERMINING WHAT FOREIGN POLICY ACTIONS ARE JUSTIFIED.
[See Justice Brief in The Value Debate Handbook]
A. THE WORD “JUSTIFIED” LITERALLY MEANS TO “ACT JUSTLY TOWARD.”
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, 2002. Retrieved Feb. 8, 2013 from http://www.thefreedictionary.
com/justified.
Justified: From the Latin, Justificare: “to act justly toward.”
B. PURSUIT OF JUSTICE SHOULD GUIDE U.S. FOREIGN POLICY.
Robert Lynch, (General Secretary, National Conference of Catholic Bishops), THE HARVEST OF
JUSTICE IS SOWN IN PEACE, 1993. Retrieved Feb. 8, 2013 from http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-andteachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/the-harvest-of-justice-is-sown-in-peace.cfm.
This new era calls for engaged and creative U.S. leadership in foreign affairs that can resist the
dangers of both isolationism and unwise intervention. We seek a U.S. foreign policy which reflects our
best traditions and which seeks effective collaboration with the community of nations to resist violence
and achieve justice in peace.
II. FAIR AND EQUAL TREATMENT ARE THE CRITERIA FOR JUSTICE.
Joseph Stigtitz, (Former Chair, Council of Economic Advisers a Chief Economist of the World Bank),
GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, 2002, xv.
We are a global community, and like all communities have to follow some rules so that we can live
together, These rules must be — and must be seen to be — fair and just, must pay due attention to the
poor as well as the powerful, must reflect a basic sense of decency and social justice.
CONTENTIONS:
I. STATE SOVEREIGNTY PROTECTS WEAKER NATIONS FROM DOMINATION BY POWERFUL STATES.
A. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AFFIRMS THE EQUAL STATUS OF ALL NATION STATES.
Jeremy Rabkin, (Prof., Government, Cornell U.), THE IMPORTANCE OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY,
Aug. 21, 1997. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2013 from http//www.apec.org.au/docs/rabkin.pdf.
The classical framework of international law — premising a world in which sovereign states are equal
and independent by the very nature of their sovereignty — was a projection from classical liberal theories
about the equality and independence of men in the state of nature. Notions of national sovereignty were
closely connected, in the thought of the Enlightenment, with liberal notions about individual rights. Ever
since then, arguments about sovereignty have regularly been linked with arguments about private property
and personal liberty. Both reflect the same skepticism about the benevolence of outside powers, the same
distrust of asserted commonalities, the same root impulse to insist on independence.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, JUSTICE FOR A LAWLESS WORLD, July 2006, 6.
The "Peace of Westphalia" of 1648 saw the end the outright authority of the Pope or the Holy Roman
Emperor, and ushered in a state system that has been in use since. The "Westphalian Model" means that
individual states need not recognize any superior authority beyond their own sovereignty.
22
B. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY GUARANTEES NON-INTERFERENCE BY THE POWERFUL AGAINST THE
WEAK.
Rodolfo Severino, (Secretary-General, Association of Southeast Asian Nations), SOVEREIGNTY,
INTERVENTION, AND THE ASEAN WAY, July 3, 2000. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2013 from
http://www.asean.org/resources/2012-02-10-08-47-56/speeches-statements-of-the-former-secretariesgeneral-of-asean/item/sovereignty-intervention-and-the-asean-way-3-july-2000.
"Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another" is one of the principles explicitly underlying
ASEAN's 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, as it did the 1971 declaration on
Southeast Asia as a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality, another of ASEAN's landmark documents.
Contrary to the assumption running through many foreign commentaries on Southeast Asian affairs today,
the principle of noninterference is not unique to ASEAN. Virtually all regional associations adhere to it, it is
enshrined in the UN Charter, it underpins the entire inter-state system. The reason is clear. National
sovereignty and its handmaiden, the principle of non-interference, are the only conceptual bulwarks
protecting the small and the weak from domination by the powerful. In the absence of a supranational
government, it is indispensable to any sort of international order.
Rodolfo Severino, (Secretary-General, Association of Southeast Asian Nations), SOVEREIGNTY,
INTERVENTION, AND THE ASEAN WAY, July 3, 2000. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2013 from
http://www.asean.org/resources/2012-02-10-08-47-56/speeches-statements-of-the-former-secretariesgeneral-of-asean/item/sovereignty-intervention-and-the-asean-way-3-july-2000.
Despite the high-minded strictures of the UN Charter, the sovereignty of many nations, particularly of
the newly independent ones, was promptly violated, largely by the major powers engaged in the Cold War,
when each protagonist sought to subvert the internal conditions of third countries in order to win them over
to its side. For precisely this reason, the new nation-states clung even more tightly to the notion of national
sovereignty as their only legal tool to protect their newly won independence and to stay out of the Cold
War.
II. INTERVENTION TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS RESULTS IN UNEQUAL TREATMENT FOR WEAKER
STATES.
A. DEFINITIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNREASONABLY VAGUE.
Tim Brinton, (Staff), SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, July 1, 2001, D6.
Is it likely that the world's governments will ever agree to the same definition of human rights? What
one nation calls a war crime is another country's military necessity. What one nation calls a freedom
fighter is another country's terrorist. The victors not only write the history; they also escape facing justice.
To many Americans, for example, Henry Kissinger is celebrated as a brilliant political strategist and
diplomat. But there are people in Indochina, Bangladesh, East Timor and Chile who view him as a war
criminal.
B. EVEN THE TERM, “GENOCIDE,” HAS BEEN BROADENED TO FIT THE NEEDS OF THE MOMENT.
Christopher Caldwell, (Sr. Editor, Weekly Standard), FINANCIAL TIMES, Dec. 16, 2006, 11.
George W. Bush, US president, tried to raise the temperature by describing Darfur as a "genocide"
at the UN in September. This was a mistake. Genocide, as most people understand it, means trying to
exterminate a race. But under the 1948 convention that the UN uses, it means a variety of acts, including
non-lethal ones such as "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group", that are
"committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". The
words "in part" mean that almost any indiscriminate killing of civilians can constitute genocide.
Alexander Cockburn, (Journalist, The Nation), LOS ANGELES TIMES, Oct. 29, 1999. Retrieved Feb. 8,
2013 from http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/29/local/me-27493.
So, is there serious evidence of a Serbian campaign of genocide in Kosovo? It's an important issue
because the NATO powers, fortified by a chorus from the liberal intelligentsia, flourished the charge of
genocide as justification for bombing that destroyed much of Serbia's economy and killed about 2,000
civilians. Whatever horrors they may have been planning, the Serbs were not engaged in genocidal
activities in Kosovo before the bombing began. They were fighting a separatist movement, led by the
Kosovo Liberation Army, and behaving with the brutality typical of security forces. One common estimate
of the number of Kosovar Albanians killed in the year before the bombing is 2,500. With NATO's
bombing came the flights and expulsions and charges that the Serbs were accelerating a genocidal plan;
in some accounts, as many as 100,000 were already dead. An alternative assessment was that NATO's
bombing was largely to blame for the expulsions and killings.
23
C. INTERVENTION TO “PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS” HAS ALMOST ALWAYS BEEN USED AS A PRETEXT
FOR OTHER LESS WORTHY MOTIVES.
Walden Bello, (Prof., Poli. Sci., University of the Philippines at Diliman), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION:
EVOLUTION OF A DANGEROUS DOCTRINE, Jan. 19, 2006. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2013 from
http://focusweb.org/node/814.
Popular among certain elite circles in the US and Europe in the 1990's, humanitarian intervention has
earned a bad name, especially in the South. Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq underline the bitter lessons of
humanitarian intervention. To repeat: Humanitarian intervention seldom remains the dominant rationale for
long, with geopolitics quickly becoming the driving force of a military operation.
Walden Bello, (Prof., Poli. Sci., University of the Philippines at Diliman), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION:
EVOLUTION OF A DANGEROUS DOCTRINE, Jan. 19, 2006. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2013 from
http://focusweb.org/node/814.
Humanitarian intervention sets a very dangerous precedent for future violations of the principle of
national sovereignty. Kosovo opened up the road to Afghanistan, and both led to the tragedy of Iraq.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 112-113.
Many examples of unilateral humanitarian intervention date back to the 1970s. For instance, in 1971,
India invaded East Pakistan under the guise that it was an act of self defense and because of the
inhuman conditions suffered by the Bengali population. The Security Council, and particularly the United
States, objected to India's use of force. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 to stop the Khmer Rouge's
genocide against its own people. Vietnam also relied on the self-defense justification. The Security
Council debated this proposition with many states and asserted unilateral intervention for human rights
reasons was not permitted under the U.N. Charter. Tanzania invaded Uganda in 1979, and toppled the
dictator Idi Amin who had committed many atrocities against his people. Tanzania partially relied on
humanitarian grounds to do so. The attack was not debated in the United Nations at all, but the
international community later derided Tanzania's actions.
Ryan Goodman, (Prof., Law, Harvard Law School), AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW,
Jan. 2006, 108.
The concern that states would exploit a humanitarian exception to justify military aggression has long
dominated academic and governmental debates. This concern pits the virtues of humanitarian rescue
against the horror of having expanded opportunities for aggressive war. Dating back to Grotius,
proponents of legalizing humanitarian intervention have struggled with the objection that their proposals
would be abused as a pretext for war.
Amos Guiora, (Prof., Law, U. of Utah College of Law), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2011, 254-255.
Whether through colonization, military, or humanitarian intervention, Western intervention in the
Middle East has, in many ways, defined the relationship between the West and the Middle East. At one
time or another Western powers have had a significant presence in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria,
Jordan/Transjordan, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates (U.K. 1819-1968). The
principle of intervention raises profound questions regarding both the limits of national sovereignty and
articulation of national self-interest. Needless to say, what is defined as intervention can also be
described as imperialism (as evidenced in many of the aforementioned cases of Western intervention in
the Middle East); after all, Western powers have historically perceived Middle East oil and trade routes
as essential to their national interests and have, therefore, imposed themselves on indigenous
populations.
D. THE UNITED STATES HAS A HISTORY OF DEFINING HUMAN RIGHTS TO ITS OWN ADVANTAGE AS
A PRETEXT FOR INTERVENTION.
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 29-30.
The fact that combating "genocide" has replaced confronting communism in some notably left and
liberal circles as a major intellectual and moral legitimation for an enduringly aggressive and
interventionist U.S. foreign policy is not fortuitous. It has been adopted to further American and allied
interests in Europe and Africa in particular but with international application.
Don Hubert, (Prof., Public Affairs, U. Ottawa), MASS ATROCITY CRIMES, 2010, 99.
The most common critique of international actions in cases of genocide and crimes against humanity
is their inconsistent application—they are only imposed against relatively weak states.
24
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 30.
The U.S. has rightly been accused of practicing double standards in relation to genocide charges,
condemning mass killings (alleged as well as real) in nations whose governments are not viewed
favorably by Washington and its allies while ignoring, minimizing and justifying it when perpetrated by an
approved government.
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 31.
During the past two decades, the post-Cold War era Washington has employed and exploited the
word genocide in furtherance of geopolitical objectives in several strategic parts of the world. As the
foreword to the volume by Noam Chomsky warns, the one-sided, nakedly partisan and frequently factdistorting genocide stratagem not only diverts attention from genuine acts of mass killing and targeting of
ethnic and other demographic groups perpetrated by the U.S., its allies and client states, but runs the
risk of producing a boy who cried wolf effect, one moreover with a retroactive component.
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 32-33.
To reiterate their point: When the killing, maiming, poisoning and displacement of millions of civilians
are perpetrated by the U.S. directly and in collusion with a client regime it assists, arms and advises—
Indochina in the 1960s and early 1970s, Central America in the 1980s, the deaths of as many as a
million Iraqis resulting from sanctions and the deliberate and systematic destruction of civilian
infrastructure in the 1990s—that form of indisputable genocide is never referred to as such and instead
presented by the government-media-obedient academia triad as not abhorrent and criminal but as
legitimate actions in pursuit of praiseworthy policies. Constructive genocide.
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 37.
The U.S. and its Western allies, which launched three wars of aggression in less than four years
(Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003) with the forced displacement of millions of
civilians, have deliberately chosen to ignore the core proscription of the Nuremberg trials, that against
waging wars of aggression, "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that
it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 37.
To relentlessly prosecute lesser crimes while perpetrating and abetting greater ones is the
prerogative of the "world's sole military superpower" (from Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
acceptance speech) and its allies. Governments of small, weak countries not sufficiently toeing
Washington's line are threatened with prosecution for actions occurring within and not outside their
borders and the only "war crimes" trials conducted are also exclusively in response to strictly internal
events. By design and selective enforcement, the new system of international law is what [Honore]
Balzac said of the law of his time, that it is a spider web through which the big flies pass and the little
ones get caught.
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 40.
The U.S. government and its highly selective "genocide" echo chambers are adept at seeing the
mote in their neighbor's eye, but are blind to the mountain of corpses produced by Washington and its
proxies.
E. THE HISTORY OF INTERVENTION IN IRAQ DEMONSTRATES THE IMPORTANCE OF OBSERVING
NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY.
Jayshree Bajoria, (Researcher, Human Rights Watch), THE DILEMMA OF HUMANITARIAN
INTERVENTION, Mar. 24, 2011. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013 from http://www.cfr.org/human-rights/dilemmahumanitarian-intervention/p16524.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright writes in a New York Times op-ed that the
"notion of national sovereignty as sacred has gained ground after the U.S. invasion of Iraq." And despite
recent efforts to enshrine the doctrine of a 'responsibility to protect' in international law, the concept of
humanitarian intervention has lost momentum," she says.
Walden Bello, (Prof., Poli. Sci., University of the Philippines at Diliman), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION:
EVOLUTION OF A DANGEROUS DOCTRINE, Jan. 19, 2006. Retrieved Feb. 6, 2013 from
http://focusweb.org/node/814.
Now, for some people in the North, who belong to states that dominate the rest of the world, national
sovereignty may seem quaint. For those of us in the South, however, the defense of this principle is a
matter of life and death, a necessary condition for the realization of our collective destiny as a nationstate in a world where being a member of an independent nation-state is the primordial condition for
stable access to human rights, political rights, and economic rights. Without a sovereign state as a
framework, our access to and enjoyment of those rights will be fragile.
25
NEGATIVE CASE #2: SANCTITY OF LIFE
The thesis of this case is that interventions designed to protect human rights are almost always counterproductive –
that is, they result in greater loss of life than the human rights abuses they were designed to prevent.
OBSERVATION:
I. PROTECTION OF HUMAN LIFE IS A PRIMARY CORE VALUE GUIDING ACTION.
Simone Roach, (Ph.D.), THE HUMAN ACT OF CARING, 1992, 23.
Human life is the precondition for all values attributed to human persons. Human life has been
referred to as "an almost absolute value in history." The need to protect human life and the more
stringent imperative of do not kill are regarded as basic, constitutive elements of the moral life of any
society. The relationships embodied in and shaped by humans rest on the inviolability of human life. The
inestimable value of human life is based on the consideration that each person has been raised to a
sublime dignity.
CONTENTIONS:
I. U.S. INTERVENTION TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS RESULTS IN GREATER LOSS OF LIFE.
A. MILITARY INTERVENTION TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS RESULTS IN GREATER LOSS OF LIFE.
Rick Rozoff, (Journalist), GENOCIDE: GLOBAL VIEWPOINTS, 2012, 40.
At the end of the day, military actions, including full-fledged wars, conducted by the U.S. and NATO
in part or in whole to ostensibly "end genocide" will produce more deaths, more mass-scale
displacement, and more expulsion and extermination of endangered minorities as has happened over
the past eleven years in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. More genocide. The genuine article.
Azadeh Pourzand, (Senior Researcher at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations),
RETHINKING WESTERN INTERVENTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS, June 13, 2012. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013
from http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2012/06/13/rethinking-western-intervention-and-human-rights.
Despite the nobility of their cause, Western human rights organizations are losing legitimacy
because they fail to assess the repercussions of their call to Western powers to take immediate action
against human rights violations. All too often the response of Western powers is military intervention.
This usually results in more of the loss of life and human rights abuses that the organizations were trying
to prevent in the first place.
Benjamin Valentino, (Prof., Government, Dartmouth College), FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Nov/Dec 2011, 64.
Another set of moral costs stems not from the unsavory behavior of the groups being protected but
from the unavoidable consequences of military intervention. Even if the ends of such actions could be
unambiguously humanitarian, the means never are. Using force to save lives usually involves taking
lives, including innocent ones. The most advanced precision-guided weapons still have not eliminated
collateral damage altogether. Many Americans remember the 18 U.S. soldiers who died in Somalia in
1993 in the “Black Hawk down” incident. Far fewer know that U.S. and UN troops killed at least 500
Somalis on that day and as many as 1,500 during the rest of the mission—more than half of them
women and children.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, (Prof., Law, Notre Dame School of Law),THE R2P CONTROVERSY, Feb. 22, 2008.
Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013 from http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/pros-and-cons-responsibility-protect.
In real life Iraq, however, military intervention has done more harm than good. It is impossible to
justify that war on humanitarian grounds. The idea of surgical strikes sounds good in theory. But in
reality, military force is very blunt, useful for very little other than responding to military force. In Liberia’s
and Sierra Leone’s civil wars, things became worse after other West African countries intervened.
B. ECONOMIC SANCTIONS DESIGNED TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS HARM MORE INNOCENT
CIVILIANS THAN THEY HELP.
Adam Jones, (Research Fellow, Genocide Studies Program, Yale U.), GENOCIDE: A COMPREHENSIVE
INTRODUCTION, 2006, 393.
The difficulty with sanctions lies in targeting them to impede a repressive or genocidal leadership,
without inflicting generalized human suffering. In two twentieth-century cases, human destruction caused
by malevolent and/or misdirected sanctions could be considered genocidal. The economic blockade
imposed on Germany during and after the First World War killed up to three-quarters of a million people.
The sanctions imposed on the Iraqi population in peacetime provide a second case.
26
Adam Jones, (Research Fellow, Genocide Studies Program, Yale U.), GENOCIDE: A COMPREHENSIVE
INTRODUCTION, 2006, 393-394.
In part as a result of the Iraqi catastrophe, "blanket economic sanctions in particular have been
increasingly discredited in recent years," because they impose "greatly disproportionate . . . hardships"
on civilians. (ellipsis in original)
Veronika Bilkova, (Prof., International Law, Charles University, Prague), RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT:
FROM PRINCIPLE TO PRACTICE, 2012, 292.
Comprehensive sanctions seem particularly ill-suited for RtoP [Responsibility to Protect] cases, since
they could further aggravate the humanitarian situation and exacerbate violent clashes over resources,
making worse off those whom they are supposed to help.
C. INTERVENTION INITIATES A CYCLE OF REVENGE AND RESPONSE THAT WORSENS THE ABUSES
OF HUMAN RIGHTS.
Benjamin Valentino, (Prof., Government, Dartmouth College), FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Nov/Dec 2011, 64.
Although military interventions are calculated to increase the costs of human rights abuses for those
who commit them, perhaps interventions’ most perverse consequence has been the way they have
sometimes actually done the opposite. If perpetrators simply blame the victims for the setbacks and
suffering inflicted by the intervention, the incentives to retaliate against victim groups, and possibly even
popular support for such retaliation, may rise. Foreign military interventions can change victims from
being viewed as a nuisance into being seen as powerful and traitorous enemies, potentially capable of
exacting revenge, seizing power, or breaking away from the state. Under these conditions, even
moderates are more likely to support harsh measures to meet such threats.
Benjamin Valentino, (Prof., Government, Dartmouth College), FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Nov/Dec 2011, 63.
Proponents of such interventions usually make their case in terms of the United States’ moral
responsibilities. Yet perhaps the most important costs incurred by military interventions have been moral
ones. On the ground, the ethical clarity that advocates of human rights have associated with such
actions—saving innocent lives—has almost always been blurred by a much more complicated reality. To
begin with, aiding defenseless civilians has usually meant empowering armed factions claiming to
represent these victims, groups that are frequently responsible for major human rights abuses of their
own.
Daniel Byman, (Policy Analyst, RAND Corporation), KEEPING THE PEACE: LASTING SOLUTIONS TO
ETHNIC CONFLICTS, 2002, 203.
Picking a winner often is difficult politically both in the region and internationally, since other powers
may prefer to back the rival side. The strategy also is highly likely to result in a short-term increase in the
fighting as arms flow into the country and the receiving party develops a new incentive to fight.
D. BY JUSTIFYING WAR AS A RESPONSE TO HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, THE “RESPONSIBILITY TO
PROTECT” MOVEMENT HAS INCREASED THE LEVEL OF VIOLENCE.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, (Prof., Law, Notre Dame School of Law), CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT INTERROGATING THEORY AND PRACTICE, 2011, 79.
There is a reason the UN Charter severely restricts the right to wage war: nothing causes greater
human suffering than war. Advocacy for humanitarian war has likely encouraged new wars. Advocacy for
R2P supports the new acceptability of war, prodding those who would otherwise argue for peace and
respect for law to do the opposite.
II. NUMEROUS EXAMPLES ILLUSTRATE THE COUNTERPRODUCTIVITY OF INTERVENING TO PROTECT
HUMAN RIGHTS.
A. LIBYA ILLUSTRATES THE FUTILITY OF INTERVENING TO PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS.
Azadeh Pourzand, (Senior Researcher at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations),
RETHINKING WESTERN INTERVENTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS, June 13, 2012. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013
from http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2012/06/13/rethinking-western-intervention-and-human-rights.
A year after the NATO strikes, Libya faces potential disintegration and partition. Also, according to
Navi Pillay, the Chief of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), in Libya today
there is still “torture, extra-judicial killings, [and] rape of both men and women.”
27
B. INTERVENTION IN KOSOVO DRAMATICALLY INCREASED THE LEVEL OF KILLING.
Noam Chomsky, (Prof., Linguistics, MIT), JUSTICE FOR A LAWLESS WORLD, July 2006, 5.
It is sometimes suggested that the NATO bombing of Kosovo was for humanitarian reasons. That is
utterly fallacious. Take a look at the first Milosevic indictment which is for crimes in Kosovo. All but one of
the crimes was after the NATO bombing. The NATO bombing was undertaken on the assumption that it
would lead to an escalation of atrocities, which it did. It was not a pleasant place before, but by
international standards it was not that terrible, unfortunately. The atrocities were fairly evenly split. The
British parliamentary inquiry determined that until January most of the atrocities were attributable to the
KLA guerrillas coming over the border to kill Serbs, trying to elicit a response.
Benjamin Valentino, (Prof., Government, Dartmouth College), FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Nov/Dec 2011, 63.
In Bosnia, for example, the United States eventually backed Croatian and Bosnian Muslim forces in
an effort to block further aggression by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. These forces were far
less brutal than the Serbian forces, but they were nevertheless implicated in a number of large-scale
atrocities. In August 1995, for example, Croatian forces drove more than 100,000 Serbs in the Krajina
region of Croatia from their homes, killing hundreds of civilians in what The New York Times described
as “the largest single ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the war.” It was later revealed that the U.S. State Department
had allowed private U.S. military consultants to train the Croatian army in preparation for the offensive.
C. AFGHANISTAN ILLUSTRATES THE HARM CAUSED BY HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION.
Azadeh Pourzand, (Senior Researcher at Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations),
RETHINKING WESTERN INTERVENTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS, June 13, 2012. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013
from http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2012/06/13/rethinking-western-intervention-and-human-rights.
Afghanistan became the first target of the “War on Terror” and the human rights violations of the
Taliban was used to justify the continuing NATO presence. More than a decade later, this war has left
irreversible costs. According to a report by the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights, a
decade after the war began “the armed conflict in Afghanistan again incurred a greater human cost in
2011 than in previous years.” The report documents 3,021 civilian deaths in 2011, an increase of 8
percent over 2010 (2,790 civilian deaths) and a 25 percent increase from 2009 (2,412 civilian deaths)
caused by anti-government groups, such as the Taliban and al-Qaida, as well as Afghan and
international military forces. Similarly, according to a report by Iraq Body Count, the total number of
violent civilian deaths due to small arms gunfire, explosive weapons, and airstrikes recorded since the
2003 invasion exceeded 114,000 as of December 2011.
D. IRAQ ILLUSTRATES THE HARM CAUSED BY HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION.
Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty), THE
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008, 71.
The irony is that while Iraq in 2003 was not an R2P situation of a kind justifying military intervention,
it may well have become one subsequently. With more than 2 million people displaced and scores of
thousands killed in post-invasion sectarian violence, the situation remains eminently capable of
generating ethnic cleansing and genocide on a scale even greater than that witnessed in the Balkans.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, (Prof., Law, Notre Dame School of Law),THE R2P CONTROVERSY, Feb. 22, 2008.
Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013 from http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/pros-and-cons-responsibility-protect.
The Iraq war has cost billions, perhaps even a trillion dollars. And yet we are far from any peaceful,
stable order. I don’t think there will ever be the kind of well-funded, robust intervention that might actually
do humanitarian good. But in the meantime, Ethiopia has intervened in Somalia with US support. There
is talk of attacking Iran. We are dealing with a new militarism, and the R2P discourse has contributed to
it, by promoting the idea of war for a good cause, which, ultimately, means that other good causes justify
war as well.
E. EVEN IN RWANDA, THE INTERVENTION INCREASED THE LEVEL OF KILLING.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, (Prof., Law, Notre Dame School of Law),THE R2P CONTROVERSY, Feb. 22, 2008.
Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013 from http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/pros-and-cons-responsibility-protect.
The usefulness of the military is often over-estimated. In Rwanda in 1994, peacekeepers were
present. They proved inadequate to prevent genocide. Rather, their presence may have compounded
the tragedy, by providing a false sense of security. The same must be said of the peacekeepers at
Srebrenica.
28
NEGATIVE CASE #3: RULE OF LAW
The thesis of this case is that under international law, the United Nations and other international legal institutions
must sanction interventions in the internal affairs of member states. The United States has no legal or moral authority to
act as the world arbiter in matters of human rights protection.
OBSERVATION:
I. INTERNATIONAL LAW IS THE STANDARD FOR DETERMINING WHAT ACTIONS ARE JUSTIFIED IN
PREVENTING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, (Prof., Law, Notre Dame School of Law, THE POWER AND PURPOSE OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2008, 14.
International law has deficits, yet it persists as the single, generally accepted means to solve the
world’s problems. It is not religion or ideology that the world has in common, but international law.
Through international law, diverse cultures can reach consensus about the moral norms that we will
commonly live by. As a result, international law is uniquely suited to mitigate the problems of armed
conflict, terrorism, human rights abuse, poverty, disease, and the destruction fo the natural environment.
It is the closest thing we have to a neutral vehicle for taking on the world’s most complex issues and
pressing problems.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, (Prof., Law, Notre Dame School of Law, THE POWER AND PURPOSE OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2008, 16.
Our acceptance of law is part of a tradition of belief in higher things. To this tradition we have added
positivist and legal process theory. We can now see the emergence of a new classical theory of
international law that revives the best of what has come before, adapted to the needs of the international
community today. It is a theory that supports not the hegemony of a few, but the flourishing of all
humanity. (end of an early chapter, note 63)
Mary Ellen O’Connell, (Prof., Law, Notre Dame School of Law, THE POWER AND PURPOSE OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2008, 20-21.
Law exists wherever human beings strive to live together in peace and this is true of the international
community as of any national or local community. Certain limited use of force for the enforcement of the
law is consistent with a well-functioning legal system; force to promote the ambitions of leaders free of
legal restraint is not. Thus, the history of ideas about enforcement in international law is blended with this
teaching of restraint on the use of force and the superiority of law to leadership. That second issue, the
relationship of law to political power, is also integral to the issue of international law’s reality as law.
(Chap. 1, note 6)
CONTENTIONS:
I. INTERNATIONAL LAW PRECLUDES UNILATERAL INTERVENTION FOR THE ENFORCEMENT OF HUMAN
RIGHTS.
A. INTERNATIONAL LAW PROHIBITS UNILATERAL HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION.
Ryan Goodman, (Prof., Law, Harvard Law School), AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW,
Jan. 2006, 111.
Since World War II, international law has prohibited states from threatening or using force except in
self-defense or pursuant to Security Council authorization. Although some scholars have argued
otherwise, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that international law forbids the unilateral use of force to
rescue victims of a humanitarian catastrophe. As a matter of treaty law, the UN Charter does not exempt
UHI [unilateral humanitarian intervention] from the prohibition on the use of force, and prominent General
Assembly resolutions clearly support this interpretation. As a matter of customary international law, the
International Court of Justice in Nicaragua v. United States concluded that custom does not permit UHI.
And according to leading international law treatises, despite divergent state practices in the 1990s, the
legal prohibition persists under both treaty and custom.
29
Amos Guiora, (Prof., Law, U. of Utah College of Law), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2011, 271.
As Professor Ryan Goodman asked, "Should international law permit states to intervene militarily to
stop a genocide or comparable atrocity without Security Council authorization?" According to Article 39,
Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter: The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the
peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what
measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace
and security.
Michael Byers, (Prof., International Law, U. of British Columbia), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL
OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2009, 385.
Unilateral humanitarian interventions have been condemned as generally illegal by over 130
countries through unilateral or joint statements such as the Declaration of the South Summit of Havana
and the final document of the Movement of the Non-Aligned Countries in Cartagena.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 123.
U.N. Charter Article 2(4) makes clear that all states "shall refrain in their international relations from
the threat or use of force . . . ." According to the U.N. Charter, states are justified in using force only
when authorized by the Security Council to prevent the most serious threats to peace under Article 42, or
in cases of self-defense under Article 51. (ellipsis in original)
B.
EVEN IN INSTANCES INVOLVING ALLEGATIONS OF GENOCIDE,
AUTHORIZATION IS REQUIRED FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION.
SECURITY
COUNCIL
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 111.
Scores of ink have been spilled to address the question of whether there is a duty to prevent
genocide even without Security Council approval. Most who have written on the subject have come down
firmly supporting the United Nation's Charter and the general prohibition on the use of force except for in
situations involving self-defense or where use of force has been approved by the Security Council.
C. UNILATERAL INTERVENTION LEADS TO CHAOS.
Ramesh Thakur, (Distinguished Fellow, Centre for International Governance), THE PEOPLE VS. THE
STATE: REFLECTIONS ON UN AUTHORITY, U.S. POWER AND THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT,
2011, 1.
Equally important, however, we cannot accept the doctrine that any one state or coalition can decide
when to intervene with force in the internal affairs of other countries, for down that path lies total chaos.
II. UNILATERAL INTERVENTION BY THE UNITED STATES UNDERMINES INTERNATIONAL LAW.
A. UNILATERAL U.S. INTERVENTION UNDERMINES RESPECT FOR SOVEREIGNTY.
Gavin Symes (J.D., U. Mich. Law School), MICHIGAN J. OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Winter 98, 616.
U.S. unilateralism thus bodes ill for the application and enforcement of international legal rules of
intervention and customary respect for sovereignty. If statements made in the aftermath of the
intervention are any indication, criticism by other nations has not prompted the United States to abandon
unilateral military intervention as a foreign policy option. The precedent set by this action, especially with
regard to the massive extension of the concept of national security, would permit unilateral military
intervention in a myriad of situations. If law consistently yields to raw military and political power, then the
validity of the international doctrine of non-intervention is necessarily undermined.
B. UNILATERAL ACTION IN IRAQ UNDERMINED THE RULE OF LAW AMONG NATIONS.
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 117.
Some have called the Iraq military intervention the "death" of the U.N. Charter and the end of "the
grand attempt to subject the use of force to the rule of law." Experts agree that this morbid assertion was
premature, but it was clear that the pendulum had swung towards the use of legitimate and legal force
only with Security Council approval.
30
Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, Spr. 2011, 123-124.
More recently, however, justifying humanitarian intervention when the Security Council has not
authorized the use of force has been not been favored by the international community in the wake of
Iraq's invasion in 2003.
C. NATO ACTION IN KOSOVO, OPERATING OUTSIDE OF UNITED NATIONS APPROVAL, UNDERMINED
INTERNATIONAL LAW.
Gregory Hafkin, (J.D. Candidate), BOSTON UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, Spr. 2010,
236.
After NATO's action in Kosovo, the law of humanitarian intervention was in a state of disorder. The
world's most powerful military alliance attempted to carve out an exception to the prohibition on the use
of force, grounded in both treaty and custom. Outside the scope of self-defense and action explicitly
authorized by the Security Council, NATO formulated a justification for the use of force in the event of
deadlock within the formal legal framework. Nevertheless, NATO's justifications for the specific situation
of Kosovo have many drawbacks, as stated above, and are very problematic to the extent they can be
used as precedent.
III. INTERNATIONAL LAW OFFERS THE PROPER FORUM FOR STOPPING SERIOUS HUMAN RIGHTS
ABUSES.
A. THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE CAN ACT AGAINST HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS EVEN
WHEN THE SECURITY COUNCIL DOES NOT APPROVE MILITARY INTERVENTION.
Sean Murphy, (Prof., Law, George Washington U.), CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2009, 356.
In some ways, the International Court could be an ideal surrogate for a deadlocked Security Council;
like the Council, the Court consists of fifteen members (judges), traditionally consisting of five judges
from each of the permanent members of the Security Council and ten judges from the different regions of
the world. However, unlike the Security Council, there is no veto power in the International Court; judges
from the major powers can and have been outvoted by the other judges. Although regarded by some as
a bit ossified, the Court is a serious institution; there is a gravity to the work of the Court that garners
respect in the legal world and there is a fair amount of fidelity by states to the Court's rulings. Further, as
a judicial institution its pronouncements are generally regarded as driven by law not politics.
B. THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (ICC) PROVIDES A MECHANISM FOR ACTING AGAINST
ABUSERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS.
Larry Dembowski, (Associate, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, Washington, D.C.), ACCOUNTABILITY
FOR ATROCITIES: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL RESPONSES, 2003, 139-140.
The ICC is a landmark attempt in international relations to provide a check on absolute sovereignty.
This is one of its strengths as well as one of its largest weaknesses and points of vulnerability to political
attack. The world has too many examples of sovereigns flaunting with impunity their ability to violate
human rights and the customs and laws of war behind the protective shield of sovereignty through the
manipulation of the machinery of the state.
Samantha Power, (Prof., Human Rights Policy, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy), in JUSTICE FOR A
LAWLESS WORLD, PART II, REPORT OF THE UN OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF
HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, July 2006, 8-9.
We live in a very bloody world and it is very hard to say that we are living in a less bloody world than
before the courts were established. However, as bad as things are in Darfur, for example, how much
worse might it be if people didn't have at the back of their minds the thoughts of these courts. This is not
about absolute deterrence. It's about relative deterrence. Let's face it – national laws don't successfully
deter criminals so one can't hold international laws, courts to a higher standard. What is probably going
to make the big difference is better enforcement. Secondly, because of specific sovereignty concerns,
perhaps the ICC's greatest impact will be to expedite the development of domestic legal enforcement
tools in countries where atrocities actually happen through complimentarity, where proud statesmen don't
want to turn over their thugs and want to do it at home for a range of reasons. So the threat of the ICC,
the spectre of Luis Moreno Ocampo, might make countries go ahead and prosecute their bad guys
themselves.
31
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, JUSTICE FOR A LAWLESS WORLD, July 2006, 6.
The ICC was established in 2002 as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide,
crimes against humanity and war crimes, as defined by several international agreements, most
prominently the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998 (the "Statute"). Almost all states
participating at the Rome adoption conference voted in favor of the Statute; only the United States,
Israel, the People's Republic of China, Iraq, Qatar, Libya and Yemen voted against. Israel went on to
sign the Statute just before it was closed for signatures, but later nullified its signature. The United States
under Bill Clinton signed the treaty, but never submitted it for ratification. When George W. Bush took
office shortly afterwards, he nullified the signature amid generalized congressional consensus. The
Statute became a binding treaty after it received its 60th ratification, which was deposited at a ceremony
at United Nations Headquarters on 11 April 2002. The ICC legally came into existence on 1 July 2002,
and can only prosecute crimes that occurred after this date. It is regarded as a major development by
activists working towards ending impunity and internationalizing justice. However, to date, less than half
the world's nations have signed or ratified the treaty, and it has fierce opponents.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, JUSTICE FOR A LAWLESS WORLD, July 2006,
10.
The developments in the last 100 years towards internationalizing justice and ending individual
impunity for atrocities have been significant, and show signs of gathering more momentum. Prosecuting
perpetrators is a key element of the increasingly active sector known as "transitional justice," where
societies emerging from repressive rule or armed conflict seek to address past abuses through different
mechanisms that now include the ICC, as well as the many truth commissions. Ending immunity for past
abuses is not only the interest of the people concerned but is also of global concern, not least because
abusive regimes or genocidal events rarely only affect people within the confines of a single territory.
C. THE UNITED NATIONS HAS ESTABLISHED SPECIAL COURTS DESIGNED TO PUNISH ABUSES OF
HUMAN RIGHTS.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, JUSTICE FOR A LAWLESS WORLD, July 2006, 6.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established while the
conflict still raged. It seemed the world was finally biting the bullet of international justice, with sufficient
political will and some force to implement it. Based in The Hague, the tribunal functions as an ad hoc
court and, following the legacy of Nuremberg, makes individuals responsible for violations of the laws or
customs of war, genocide and crimes against humanity. It can only try individuals, not organizations or
governments, and the maximum sentence it can impose is life imprisonment. Created in 1993, it issued
its last indictment in March 2004. It aims to complete all trials by 2008 and all appeals by 2010.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, JUSTICE FOR A LAWLESS WORLD, July 2006, 6.
As of 16 March 2006, the ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia] had
indicted 161 people. Only six of these remained "at large". The cases against 85 of the indicted had been
concluded: 46 were found guilty; eight acquitted; 25 had their indictments withdrawn; and six died (four in
custody and three while their cases were being heard). Four cases had been sent to national courts in
Serbia or Croatia, for trial. Seventeen of those convicted had completed their sentences and had been
released by May 2006. Those indicted ranged from soldiers to generals and police commanders, as well
as prime ministers. Slobodan Milosevic was the first sitting head of state indicted for war crimes; he died
while still being tried in March 2006. Other "high level" indictees included Milan Babic, Croatian Serb
prime minister of Republika Srpska Krajina; Ramush Haradinaj, Albanian prime minister of Kosovo;
Radovan Karadzic, Montenegrin former President of Republika Srpska; and Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian
Serb army commander.
32
D. LEADERS CONTEMPLATING SERIOUS HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES ARE DETERRED BY THE
INTERNATIONAL LAW PUNISHMENTS AVAILABLE.
Samantha Power, (Prof., Human Rights Policy, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy), in JUSTICE FOR A
LAWLESS WORLD, PART II, REPORT OF THE UN OFFICE FOR THE COORDINATION OF
HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS, July 2006, 8.
I think as tempting as it is to give in to despair in the 21st century, in light of the teeming proliferation
of threats and the continuation of mass atrocities, one only has to flash back 15 years to recall that a
perpetrator of mass crimes against humanity, genocide, etc. was guaranteed to walk if his state was
unwilling or unable to punish him. Usually, of course, the perpetrators of such atrocities are normally
doing the bidding of the state or they are actually running the state. So, the very fact that Charles Taylor
has to suffer the indignity of fleeing his home in the wake of an extradition request – in his bathrobe; the
very fact that Ratko Mladic for all his alleged impunity is utterly unable to be a political or security factor
in the former Yugoslavia because he has to hide under ground; the fact that when you go to the tribunals
in The Hague or Arusha, or now in Freetown, you see people who committed those crimes who had
every expectation of being able to live out their lives spending the 'fruits' of their labours, you know a shift
has occurred.
E. UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPERS ARE AN EFFECTIVE MECHANISM FOR PREVENTING SERIOUS
ABUSES OF HUMAN RIGHTS.
Severine Rugumamu, (Prof., Development Studies, U. of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania), AFRICA-U.S.
RELATIONS: STRATEGIC ENCOUNTERS, 2006, 27.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the international community supported ambitious peacekeeping and
peacemaking initiatives in Africa and elsewhere. Of the thirty-two UN peacekeeping operations launched
between 1989 and 1998, thirteen took place in Africa. The Security Council quadrupled the number of
resolutions issued, tripled the peacekeeping operations it authorized, and increased the number of
economic sanctions it imposed from one to seven per year. Military forces increased from fewer than
10,000 to more than 70,000. The peacekeeping budget skyrocketed from $230 million to $3.6 billion
during the same period. Arguably, when deployed with a credible deterrent capacity, equipped with
appropriate resources, and backed by sufficient political will, these efforts resulted in some significant
successes. In particular, some comprehensive settlements ended prolonged and deadly conflicts in
Namibia and Mozambique.
Elisabeth Kidder, (Dir., Survivors United to Save the Women of Darfur), CONSOLIDATING PEACE WHILE
CONFRONTING GENOCIDE, House Comm. on International Relations Hrg., June 22, 2005, 50.
In fact, a study by the Salzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University,
"empirically demonstrated that the presence of international peacekeepers has an observable positive
impact in solidifying peace when compared to situations when belligerents are left to their own devices to
make or honor a peace agreement."
Eric Schwartz, (Consultant, Council on Foreign Relations), U.N. PEACEKEEPING REFORM: SEEKING
GREATER ACCOUNTABILITY AND INTEGRITY, House International Relations Comm. Hrg., May 18,
2005, 25.
Nonetheless, there have also been positive developments since the end of the Cold War. In
Namibia, Cambodia, Kosovo and other operations, UN peacekeepers — or UN civilian missions serving
with green helmeted "coalitions of the willing" — have helped to provide stability and promote economic
and political development. Moreover, the UN Secretariat and UN member states have learned and
implemented important lessons over the years. For example, in Sierra Leone and East Timor, UN
missions were substantially strengthened and — as a result — have helped to provide stability and hope
to the citizens of both countries.
Victoria Holt, (Sr. Associate, The Henry L. Stimson Center), U.N. PEACEKEEPING REFORM: SEEKING
GREATER ACCOUNTABILITY AND INTEGRITY, House International Relations Comm. Hrg., May 18,
2005, 31.
The United Nations has embraced peacekeeping reforms following the 2000 Brahimi Report,
developed its Best Practices Unit within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and sustained ongoing efforts to improve its functions. Operations are showing signs of success, including tow that are
now winding down, in Timor-Lest and Sierra Leone. The UN has applied lessons from past operations to
new ones, improved its mission planning and logistics capacity, and tried to be candid about how to
match UN mandates with field missions, even when the Security Council did not want to hear it.
35
INDEX TO EVIDENCE
I. Human Rights is defined. (1-4)
II. The United States is justified in intervening in an attempt to stop
human rights abuses.
A. Genocide in Rwanda was a horrific example of the abuse of
human rights. (5-7)
B. Genocide in Sudan was a horrific example of the abuse of
human rights. (8-10)
C. The Genocide Convention provides for international action to
prevent genocide. (11-13)
D. The Genocide Convention empowers all member parties to
take action to prevent genocide. (14)
E. There are many precedents for humanitarian intervention. (15)
F. Non-military interventions are available for stopping genocide.
(16-17)
G. Sovereignty should not stand above human rights. (18-19)
H. Protection of human life is more important than protection of
sovereignty. (20)
I. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is not an example of R2P
(Responsibility to Protect). (21)
J. Human rights abuses create refugee crises. (22)
K. Intervention can be legitimate, even when it is not technically
legal. (23-29)
L. The United Nations fails to act against genocide. (30-32)
M. The Security Council blocks effective action against genocide.
(33-34)
N. The UN Charter does not allow effective action against
genocide. (35-37)
III. The United States is not justified in intervening in an attempt to
stop human rights abuses.
A. The human rights intervention in Kosovo resulted in greater
loss of life. (38)
B. Military intervention is not an effective response to human
rights abuses. (39-41)
C. Economic assistance is not an effective response to human
rights abuses. (42-43)
D. Humanitarian interventions are often undertaken for ulterior
motives. (44-47)
E. Hitler used the protection of human rights as a pretext for
invasion. (48-49)
Evidence
1 AngliaCampus, GLOSSARY OF TERMS, 2006. Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013
from
http://www.jeron.je/anglia/learn/sec/geog/gn009/glossary.
htm.
Human Rights: a right or rights (for instance to freedom of speech,
freedom of movement, certain standards of life or treatment) which are
believed to belong to every person and individual.
2 Bert Lockwood, (Editor, Human Rights Quarterly), PITTSBURGH
POST-GAZETTE, June 25, 2001, D2. What's the definition of human
rights? The Universal Declaration sets out civil and political rights, the
traditional rights that are included in our Bill of Rights. Freedom of
speech, freedom of religion, various due process guarantees, trial by
jury, presumption of innocence, prohibitions against cruel and unusual
punishment. In addition and of equal importance are economic and
social rights, rights to have your basic needs met -- food, healthcare,
social security.
3 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MARXISM, Sept. 12, 2009. Retrieved Feb. 6,
2013 from http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/i.htm. The distinction
made by Marx between "human rights" and "political rights" can be
summarized as follows: Human rights — the right to property, freedom of
religion, etc., the rights which guarantee the concrete, real human being
in their occupation, their beliefs, etc. — but founded on the separation of
man from man, not on the relations or community of people, — the
foundation of bourgeois political economy. Political rights, — equality
before the law, universal suffrage, etc. — can only be the rights of
abstract human beings, rights which abstract from the real differences in
wealth, privilege, education, occupation, kinship etc.
4 Paul Mobbs, (GreenNet Civil Society Rights Project), CSIR
GLOSSARY AND CROSS-REFERENCE INDEX, 2002. Online. Internet.
www.internetrights.org.uk. Human Rights — Human rights are minimum
standards of legal, civil and political freedom that are granted universally
via the United Nations, or regionally through such bodies as the Council
of Europe. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets the
global standard. In Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights
sets slightly different standards to the UN Convention that are relevant to
the European context. In the UK the European Convention on Human
Rights was finally enacted into UK law, fifty years after the European
Convention was signed by Britain, under the Human Rights Act 1998.
5 Chaim Kaufmann, (Prof., International Relations, Lehigh U.), FOREIGN
AFFAIRS, July/Aug 2002, 142. Continuing civil wars in the Democratic
Republic of Congo and in Rwanda, partly sparked by the Rwandan
genocide, have led to at least another two million deaths.
6 John Curley, (Editor), JOURNAL OF CATHOLIC LEGAL STUDIES,
2008, 396. By mid-May, the authorities ordered the final phase, that of
tracking down the last surviving Tutsi. They sought to exterminate both
those who had hidden successfully and those who had been spared thus
far - like women and children - or protected by their status in the
community, like priests and medical workers. As the RPF advanced
through the country, assailants also hurried to eliminate any survivors
who might be able to testify about the slaughter. Throughout the
genocide, Tutsi women were often raped, tortured and mutilated before
they were murdered.
7 Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN
GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Spr. 2011, 113. Perhaps the
most famous modern example of the world community's inaction over
gross human rights violations occurred in Rwanda in the mid-1990s. In
1994, the Hutu majority in Rwanda began killing the Tutsi minority
population.
8 Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN
GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Spr. 2011, 118-119. Hostilities
boiled over early in the morning on April 25, 2003 when a SLA bomb
exploded at a small airport where Sudanese soldiers were located. The
SLA then killed the remaining soldiers, took over the military outpost, and
captured the head of the Sudanese Air Force. Sudan's government
responded by coordinating air strikes with the local, newly-armed Arab
tribesmen known as the janjaweed. This strategy laid the foundation for
the later brutalities committed against the unarmed black African citizens,
including mass murder and rape. Since 2003, at least 70,000 civilians
have been killed in Darfur and approximately 1.85 million people have
been internally displaced. Again, the international community failed to act
promptly to prevent this humanitarian catastrophe.
9 Abdelgabar Adam, (President, Darfur Human Rights Organization),
THE DETERIORATING PEACE IN SUDAN, House International
Relations Comm. Hrg., Sept. 20, 2006, 72. The radical Islamic
government in Khartoum and the Arab militia are determined to carry-out
a deliberate policy of extermination of African tribal people in Darfur by
killing, burning, poisoning, starvation and disease that will ultimately lead
to death.
36
10 Mira Sorvino, (Stop Violence Against Women Campaign, Amnesty
International), THE DETERIORATING PEACE IN SUDAN, House
International Relations Comm. Hrg., Sept. 20, 2006, 27. The situation on
the ground worsens every day; the World Food Program warned recently
that due to fighting and banditry 350,000 people in North Darfur had
been cut off from food aid. Government forces have driven villagers to
flee, leaving crops to wither. Blocked migration routes cause water
shortages and lack of access to health care. Humanitarian aid access on
the ground diminishes even further as groups pull their workers out
because of intolerable risk; 12 aid workers have been killed since April.
U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland refers to the aid situation as a
"freefall" necessitating the U.N. peacekeeping troops to avoid a
"collapse." The proxy militias fighting in Chad have destroyed the safe
haven for Darfuri refugees who fled across the border; many have now
returned to take their chances in war-torn Darfur alongside Chadian
refugees fearing for their lives. Those who remain in eastern Chad are in
great danger, as militias conscript men and boys from the very refugee
camps meant to protect them.
11 Burns H. Weston, (Prof., Law, U. of Iowa) in HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE
WORLD COMMUNITY, 1992, 59. Drawing on the principles of
Nuremberg, the United Nations developed the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Genocide is
defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a
national, ethical, racial, or religious group as such,” and the Contracting
Parties to the Convention confirm that, even if perpetrated by a
government against its own inhabitants, it is a crime under international
law which they undertake to prevent and punish. Genocide is a violation
of human rights on the most hideous scale.
12 John Shattuck, (Former Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human
Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State), FREEDOM ON FIRE:
HUMAN RIGHTS WARS & AMERICAS RESPONSE, 2003, 295.
Intervention, especially intervention that might involve military action, is
not to be taken lightly. The U.N. Charter is based on the principle of the
sovereign equality of states, under which a sovereign state is
empowered to exercise exclusive jurisdiction within its borders, and other
states are obligated not to intervene. But when a state fails, and cannot
protect the fundamental rights of its citizens enshrined in international
law, intervention may be justified under an international responsibility to
protect rights recognized by treaties like the Genocide Convention. By
framing the right to intervene to stop or contain a human rights war as a
responsibility to save the lives of people facing genocide or crimes
against humanity, both sovereignty and human rights principles within
the meaning of the U.N. charter are preserved.
15 Amos Guiora, (Prof., Law, U. of Utah College of Law), CASE
WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2011,
257-258. Despite the relatively recent use of the term "humanitarian
intervention," modern history is replete with examples of such
intervention. Some of the earliest occurrences of humanitarian
intervention extend back to the nineteenth century, with the notable
interventions by the United Kingdom, France, and Russia in Syria,
Naples, and Greece to prevent local governments from murdering
citizens of the respective countries. Since that time period, other notable
humanitarian interventions include Belgian intervention in the Congo
(1960), French intervention in Central Africa (1979), U.S. intervention in
Somalia (1992-1993), and the previously cited NATO intervention in the
former Yugoslavia (1999).
16 Fran Quigley, (Prof., Law, Indiana U. School of Law), COLUMBIA
HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW, Fall 2009, 36. As shown above, the
international community has responded to the absence of rule of law and
human rights in Kenya and other developing countries with significant
investments in rule of law programming as part of an overall
development approach. However, these rule of law efforts have been
largely ineffective. This failure is the result of adherence to a misguided
model of top-down efforts to impose rule of law on countries without
adequate attention to the necessary task of growing grassroots-level
political will for enforcement of basic human rights.
17 Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty), THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008,
127. The jamming of radio frequencies is another often urged reactive
measure designed to address behavior closely linked to the commission
of mass atrocity crimes when stations are used to broadcast hate
messages, as in the case of Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda in 1994.
This means sending a disrupting radio signal that overtakes or disrupts
targeted radio frequencies: a receiver finds the signal frequency of the
radio station that is sending hate messages, and then a jamming signal
can be tuned to either interrupt the broadcasting or replace it with a
different message. Radio frequencies can be jammed in this way by
trained and equipped personnel operating receivers and blocking
devices from the ground in-country or in a neighboring country.
18 S. Neil MacFarlane, (Analyst, International Institute for Strategic
Studies), INTERVENTION IN CONTEMPORARY WORLD POLITICS,
2002, 52-53. As Boutros-Ghali's successor, Kofi Annan, put it in 1998:
The Charter protects the sovereignty of peoples. It was never meant as a
license for governments to trample on human rights and human dignity.
Sovereignty means responsibility, not just power.
13 Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN
GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Spr. 2011, 120. Genocide
became a specific crime in 1948 with the adoption of the U.N. Genocide
Convention. The Genocide Convention carefully defines the crime: it
punishes more than genocide itself but also acts connected with
genocide, such as conspiracy to commit genocide; it affirms that
genocide can occur during wartime and peacetime; and it establishes
individual criminal responsibility along with international state
responsibility. The Genocide Convention is widely acknowledged as
representing customary international law as well as holding to a status of
jus cogens. Importantly, jus cogens is a peremptory norm of international
law upon which no derogation is possible. Accordingly, jus cogens is
afforded the highest status in international law and, in some ways, is akin
to natural law.
19 Stephen Carley, (J.D. Candidate), CONNECTICUT LAW REVIEW,
July 2009, 1744. Though stripped of much of its persuasive force in
recent decades, the continuing -- and perplexing -- notion of this principle
of absolute internal sovereignty is one of the most prominent obstacles to
realizing international human rights. For instance, the 2007 democratic
movement in Burma was left unsupported by the international community
due in part to the intransigence of this odd and destructive idea.
14 Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN
GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Spr. 2011, 127-128. For
example, U.N. Charter Article 2(4) prohibits the use of force only in a
"manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." However,
the duty to prevent genocide is consistent with the "Purposes of the
United Nations," because preventing genocide, at its essence, is about
"reaffirming faith in fundamental human rights," and "saving succeeding
generations from the scourge of war" - language found in the Preamble
to the U.N. Charter. Lastly, the duty to prevent genocide is an absolutist
principle, unlike the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4), which
permits two exceptions. Therefore, if ever in conflict, the duty to prevent
genocide should always prevail.
21 Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty), THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008,
69. Few misunderstandings have been more persistent, or have done
more to undermine global acceptance of R2P, than the perception that
the coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a good example of the
responsibility to protect principle at work. It was in fact nothing of the
kind, and—quite apart from its botched implementation—stands rather
as a classic example of how not to apply the R2P norm. In the first place,
in the absence of Security Council authorization—and any credible claim
of self-defense against actual or imminent attack—the invasion was
simply illegal under international law.
20 Mathew Cooper, (Clerk, UN International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda), DENVER JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND
POLICY, Spr. 2012, 203. The tension between sovereignty, permissible
uses of force, and the prevention of atrocity crimes is unavoidable. Even
so, this evolution towards independent humanitarian intervention was
somewhat inevitable considering the world's foremost priority of
protecting human life.
37
22 Modibo Ocran, (Prof., Law, U. Akron), THE CRISIS OF
PEACEKEEPING IN FORMER YUGOSLAVIA, 2002, 193. Human rights
repression that leads to a huge exodus of refugees to neighboring states
could lead to serious tensions among the neighbors as the receiving
countries begin to chafe under the pressure of large numbers of
displaced persons and therefore attempt to force some of them back into
their country of emigration. This situation could be characterized as a
threat to international peace and security.
23 Adam Jones, (Research Fellow, Genocide Studies Program, Yale U.),
GENOCIDE: A COMPREHENSIVE INTRODUCTION, 2006, 395. In the
wake of the Kosovo intervention, carried out without UN Security Council
authorization, an Independent International Commission was formed
under the stewardship of South African Judge Richard Goldstone (who
also spent two years as head of the ICTY tribunal at the Hague). One
commission member, political scientist Mary Kaldor, summarized the
commission's conclusion "that the Kosovo intervention was illegal,
because there was no Security Council resolution, but legitimate
because it resolved a humanitarian crisis and had widespread support
within the international community and civil society.
24 Cristina Badescu, (Prof., International Relations, U. Toronto),
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND THE RESPONSIBILITY TO
PROTECT, 2011, 58. The question of legitimacy of interventions without
the Security Council stamp of approval was extensively debated after the
Kosovo intervention, with scholars portraying it as indicative of a new
norm of humanitarian intervention. Most democratic governments and
numerous scholars perceived this intervention as legitimate, even if it
was deemed “illegal” because it was not authorized by the Security
Council.
25 Gareth Evans, (Co-Chair, International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty), THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, 2008,
147. We must simply hope that over time there emerges some greater
convergence between the legal and political order, that the Security
Council will work better than it has done, and that fewer cases will arise
of manifest tension between legality and legitimacy.
26 Mathew Cooper, (Clerk, UN International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda), DENVER JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND
POLICY, Spr. 2012, 195. While there is a good-faith argument that a
"right" to independent humanitarian intervention exists akin to the "right"
of self-defense, there is yet another viable argument available to states
enacting true humanitarian interventions. In the wake of Kosovo,
distinguished international jurists Antonio Cassese and Thomas Franck
both came to the conclusion that HI is not yet legal, but justified.
27 Michael Byers, (Prof., International Law, U. of British Columbia),
CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW,
2009, 384. Nevertheless, a predicament arises when the Security
Council fails to act in the face of gross human rights violations, either
because of a political stalemate or a widespread absence of political will.
In such a situation, a unilateral humanitarian intervention may be the only
option available for stopping mass atrocities, even if such interventions
remain illegal under the U.N. Charter and customary international law.
Given this predicament, the definition of aggression must preserve
international stability by maintaining the existing rules on the use of force
while, at the same time, allowing the occasional bona fide humanitarian
intervention to take place.
28 Michael Byers, (Prof., International Law, U. of British Columbia),
CASE WESTERN RESERVE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW,
2009, 385-386. In any event, international reaction to the Kosovo
intervention raises the possibility that UHI [unilateral humanitarian
intervention] could be regarded as legitimate (rather than legal) in certain
limited and exceptional circumstances. By legitimacy, we mean "a
generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are
desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system
of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions."
29 Rachel E. VanLandingham, (Judge Advocate, U.S. Air Force),
VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, Spr. 2012, 885. As
mentioned above, the Rwandan tragedy and the desire to prevent mass
atrocities in Kosovo in the late 1990s led world leaders, such as Great
Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair, to push the humanitarian
pendulum back toward the pre-Somalia period of humanitarian activism.
He declared in 1999 that there existed a right of humanitarian
intervention when necessary to prevent or stop gross human rights
abuses within a state, and that this moral right was legitimate even
without Security Council authorization.
30 Hillel Neuer, (Dir., UN Watch), THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN
RIGHTS COUNCIL: REFORM OR REGRESSION? House International
Relations Comm. Hrg., Sept. 6, 2006, 51. So far, however, the Council’s
record has been a profound disappointment. Despite holding three
sessions that purported to address substantive human rights issues, the
Council has managed to ignore most of the world’s worst abuses. The
situation in Darfur—perhaps today’s worst case of mass human rights
abuse—merited only a brief passing debate, with Sudan easily escaping
censure. Notwithstanding urgent warnings of even worse atrocities to
come, there has been no attempt by Council members to convene a
special session for the millions of Darfur victims. Instead, the Council,
dominated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), devoted
100% of its country-specific resolutions, two special sessions, one “factfinding” mission, and a “high-level commission of inquiry” to one-sided
and politically-motivated attacks on Israel, all of which granted effective
immunity to violations of inter-national law by Hamas and Hezbollah.
31 Sara Dillon, (Prof., Law, Suffolk U.), MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2012, 182. It is well established
that the system envisioned by the United Nations (U.N.) Charter--with the
Security Council identifying threats to international peace and security,
and when needed calling forth an international military response--never
functioned as it should have.
32 Sarah Mazzochi, (J.D., Roger Williams U. School of Law), GOLDEN
GATE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, Spr. 2011, 121. The
enforcement of the Genocide Convention has not been very effective. In
the history of the U.N., the General Assembly pronounce a case of
genocide only once in Sabra and Shatila in 1982. Moreover, in the sixty
years since the Genocide Convention's passage, very few prosecutions
for genocide have occurred globally.
33 J.L. Holzgrefe & Robert Keohane, (Professors, Political Science,
Duke U.), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: ETHICAL, LEGAL AND
POLITICAL DILEMMAS, 2003, 131. As Kofi Annan emphasized, the
impossibility of gaining Security Council authorization for the intervention
indicated a disturbing tension between two core values of the
international legal system itself: respect for state sovereignty and a
commitment to peaceful relations among states, on the one hand, and
the protection of basic human rights, on the other. The point is not simply
that the intervention, though illegal, was morally justifiable; in addition, it
was consonant with one of the most important values of the UN and of
the entire system of international law on its most progressive
interpretation. More precisely, the perception is growing that the
requirement of Security Council authorization is an obstacle to the
protection of basic human rights in internal conflicts. Since the majority of
violent conflicts are now within states rather than between them, the time
is ripe to consider changing or abandoning a rule of humanitarian
intervention that was created for a quite different world.
34 John Curley, (Editor), JOURNAL OF CATHOLIC LEGAL STUDIES,
2008, 414. The organization [meaning the UN] has acted inadequately -or not at all -- in the face of a series of human rights atrocities. In these
instances, the critical issue has been whether individual nations should
sit outraged on the sidelines, prohibited from action by the United
Nations Charter.
35 Bryan Kreykes, (Law Clerk to Judge Dickinson Debevoise, Sr. District
Judge, U.S. District Court for New Jersey), LOYOLA OF LOS ANGELES
INTERNATIONAL & COMPARATIVE LAW REVIEW, Summer 2010,
356. The text of the U.N. Charter contains no provision allowing for
humanitarian intervention in the internal affairs of a state -- even in cases
of egregious human rights violations such as genocide, war crimes, and
crimes against humanity.
38
36 Mari Katayanagi, (Staff, UN Peacekeeping Mission to Croatia),
HUMAN RIGHTS FUNCTIONS OF UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING
OPERATIONS, 2002, 241-242. The Declaration on the Inadmissibility of
Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States almost
reiterates the previous two declarations. It particularly states regarding
human rights: (1) The duty of a State to refrain from the exploitation and
the distortion of human rights issues as a means of interference in the
internal affairs of States, of exerting pressure on other States or creating
distrust and disorder within and among States or groups of States. Two
Declarations of the General Assembly have been issued in the 1990s
basically repeating the same views as those of the above three
Declarations.
37 Stephen Carley, (J.D. Candidate), CONNECTICUT LAW REVIEW,
July 2009, 1769. Short of the deployment of forces, Chapter VI of the
Charter permitted referrals of disputes to the Security Council and
authorized the Council to investigate such disputes and to recommend
procedures for pacific settlement. However -- and this point is crucial to
understanding the meaning of the United Nations' enforcement powers -there is no provision in the Charter which obligates or even authorizes
the organization to intervene in the event of widespread or systemic
human rights atrocities committed by a state against its citizens.
38 Benjamin Valentino, (Prof., Government, Dartmouth College),
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Nov/Dec 2011, 64. In Kosovo, in addition to
between 700 and several thousand Serbian military deaths, Human
Rights Watch estimates that NATO air strikes killed more than 500
civilians. NATO pilots, ordered to fly above 10,000 feet to limit their own
losses, found it difficult to distinguish between friend and foe on the
ground. Sixteen civilians were also killed when NATO bombed a Serbian
television station that it accused of spreading pro-government
propaganda. These and other incidents led Human Rights Watch to
conclude that NATO had violated international humanitarian law in its
conduct of the war. Amnesty International accused NATO of war crimes.
39 Benjamin Valentino, (Prof., Government, Dartmouth College),
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Nov/Dec 2011, 68. What is more, the record of lowcost preventive missions has been at least as bad as the record of
interventions reacting to atrocities. One of the most tragic aspects of the
genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur was that international
peacekeepers were present during some of the worst episodes of
violence, such as the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica
in 1995, which was witnessed by 400 UN peacekeepers.
40 Chaim Kaufmann, (Prof., International Relations, Lehigh College),
THE USE OF FORCE: MILITARY POWER AND INTERNATIONAL
POLITICS, 2004, 409. No outside force, no matter how great its
advantage in combat power, can pacify ethnic hostilities inflamed by war.
Nor can it resolve the intergroup security dilemma except by creating
separate, defensible regions for each group.
41 David Last, (Prof., Politics, Royal Military College, Kingston, Canada),
TWISTING ARMS AND FLEXING MUSCLES, 2005, 97. The debacles of
humanitarian strategies in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda demand
caution in this regard. In Somalia, the control of aid became a strategic
asset fought over by rival clans. In Bosnia, food and material aid fuelled
the war effort and may have prolonged the conflict. In Rwanda, extremist
control of humanitarian assistance camps supported the genocidaires
and spilled the conflict over to affect neighbouring Zaire.
42 J.L. Holzgrefe & Robert Keohane, (Professors, Political Science,
Duke U.), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: ETHICAL, LEGAL AND
POLITICAL DILEMMAS, 2003, 316. Once the decision is taken to
introduce humanitarian aid into a war zone, backed up by peacekeepers
to aid in its delivery, the aid itself becomes a focus of combat. Its
provision, even to unarmed combatants, becomes a way, not to damp
down the fighting, but to keep it going. Neutral humanitarian assistance
can have the perverse effect of sustaining the fighting it seeks to stop.
43 J.L. Holzgrefe & Robert Keohane, (Professors, Political Science,
Duke U.), HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: ETHICAL, LEGAL AND
POLITICAL DILEMMAS, 2003, 316. All victims have some claim to
assistance from those bystanders who can provide it. But if that is all that
bystanders do, they may help to keep civil wars going, by sustaining the
capacity of a civilian population to absorb still more punishment. In
Somalia the incontinent flow of humanitarian aid into Mogadishu in 1992
actually exacerbated the internal civil war between warlords for control of
the capital and surrounding countryside. Suddenly, the warlords had
valuable commodities to fight over. Instead of damping down the civil
war, aid caused it to flare more violently. Aid, therefore, is rarely neutral.
Those who secure control of it on the ground secure power and
resources to continue their struggles.
44 Ryan Goodman, (Prof., Law, Harvard Law School), AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Jan. 2006, 107. A key obstacle
to legalizing unilateral humanitarian intervention (UHI) is the overriding
concern that states would use the pretext of humanitarian intervention to
wage wars for ulterior motives.
45 Ryan Goodman, (Prof., Law, Harvard Law School), AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Jan. 2006, 141. One of the
principal obstacles to an internationally recognized right of humanitarian
intervention is the concern that aggressive states would use the pretext
of humanitarianism to launch wars for ulterior motives. In the past few
decades, such prudential considerations have stymied the doctrinal
development of humanitarian intervention. Leading public international
law scholars and the great majority of states -- including states that have
engaged in humanitarian intervention -- refuse to endorse the legality of
UHI [unilateral humanitarian intervention] for fear of its abuse as a
pretext.
46 Sara Dillon, (Prof., Law, Suffolk U.), MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, 2012, 189. Those most
strenuously opposed to the adoption of a humanitarian exception have
expressed doubt that a pro-intervention doctrine would be used
impartially and fairly, and there is a fear that strong states would rely on
the doctrine to interfere in an exploitative manner in the affairs of weaker
states.
47 Tom Barry, (Staff, Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute
for Policy Studies), THE PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE, Sept. 21, 1999.
Retrieved Feb. 5, 2013 from http://www.fpif.org/ progresp/
volume3/v3n34_body.html. Another concern that arises from the waning
of the national sovereignty principle is that intervention in the domestic
affairs nations may occur not based on some objective standard but
rather according to determinations of the strategic interests of the world's
most powerful nations. As Thomas Weiss, director of the Thomas J.
Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies recently observed, "When
conflicts are clearly regarded as challenges to the dominant political and
economic order, intervention is more likely."
48 Ryan Goodman, (Prof., Law, Harvard Law School), AMERICAN
JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Jan. 2006, 113. In order to
sharpen the argument, it is worth considering that similar prudential
concerns animated the framers of the UN Charter. States designed the
use of force regime partly in response to the perceived lessons of World
War II. One of the haunting memories was Hitler's use of humanitarian
justifications for military expansion. It is well known that Hitler invoked
the "right of self-determination" of German nationals as a pretext for his
incursions into Austria and Czechoslovakia. Perhaps less well known is
the striking resemblance between Hitler's rhetoric and contemporary
humanitarian initiatives. In a letter to Chamberlain, Hitler justified his
military objectives in the Sudetenland on the grounds that "Germans as
well as the other various nationalities in Czechoslovakia have been
maltreated in the unworthiest manner, tortured, . . . [and denied] the right
of nations to self-determination," that "in a few weeks the number of
refugees who have been driven out has risen to over 120,000," that "the
security of more than 3,000,000 human beings" was in jeopardy, and
that the German government was "determined by one means or another
to terminate these attempts . . . to deny by dilatory methods the legal
claims of oppressed peoples." Hitler's rhetorical efforts reveal -- perhaps
in the starkest terms possible -- what is at stake with regard to UHI
[unilateral humanitarian intervention]. (ellipsis in original)