QUESTION 2 It has been said that, ‘when a State utterly or egregiously fails to protect the rights of the people residing within its jurisdiction the rest of humanity must have capacities to do more...

BLB4143
Humanitarian Intervention and State Sovereignty
Table of contents
Humanitarian Intervention
Humanitarian intervention has been described as the use of "military force against another country by the State against which it is directed" by a State, where the principal objective of this military action, openly announced, is to end human rights abuses committed by the State against which it is directed. With this wider definition, it should be noted that humanitarian intervention requires non-forceable approaches, including interference without military force aimed at relieving mass human misery within sovereign borders. The concept of humanitarian intervention in customary international law dates from the 17th century to Hugo Grotius and European politics.[footnoteRef:12140] A compelling external policy issue has remained the subject of humanitarian action, especially since the intervention in Kosovo by NATO in 1999, because it stresses the tension between the principle of sovereignty as a defining pillar and international law, and international human rights and force standards. It has also sparked legislative and academic debates about its legitimacy, the ethics of military action to deal with human rights abuses if it should happen, who should participate and how effective it should be. It represents for its supporters an imperative action against human rights abusses and the rights of the state sovereignty while it is also seen by its detractors as a justification for the military intervention which is often without legitimate restrictions, limited and with unclear purposes. Its repeated use of foreign diplomacy at the end of the Cold War showed that a new age of military action was emerging, while some claim now that 9/11 terrorist attacks and Our "war on terror" have put an end to the era of humanitarian interventions.[footnoteRef:27186] [12140: Archibugi, D. (2004). Cosmopolitan guidelines for humanitarian intervention. Alternatives, 29(1), 87-103.
] [27186: Western, J., & Goldstein, J.S. (2011). Humanitarian intervention comes of age: Lessons from Somalia to Libya. Foreign Affairs.
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State Sovereignty
State sovereignty means the absolute authority of the state, and freedom in foreign affairs, over its own territory. Thus, this principle obliges a State, through its territories and the independence of another State which constitutes sovereign entities of equal status, to accept the full authority of any other State.'[footnoteRef:20371] Sovereignty provides the basis in international law for State action claims, and its infringement is routinely used as a reason for using force in an international relationship. State sovereignty is the principle that states govern all persons and properties on their territory in full and exclusively. The concept that all nations are equal as states is also part of state sovereignty. In other words, all nations, from the small islands of Micronesia up to Russia's vast expanses, all have the same right to act as a state and to make decision about what happens on their own borders, given their different land masses, population sizes or financial capabilities. Because in this sense all States are equal, one state has no right to interfere with another state's internal affairs.[footnoteRef:752] [20371: Volsky, A. (2007). Reconciling human rights and state sovereignty, justice and the law, in humanitarian interventions. International Public Policy Review, (1), 40-47.
] [752: Reus-Smith, Ch. (2001). Human rights and the social construction of sovereignty. British International Studies Association, 27, 519-538.
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In practice, sovereignty means that no particular internal action can be requested by one state. For instance, Brazil limits Canada's reaction by not accepting a Brazilian proposal to convert a large portion of the rainforest of Brazil into an amusement park. The Brazilian Government should meet with Canada to persuade it to stop the project. To evaluate the project's overall opinion, Canada can bring the issue before the UN. On the world media, Canada can also shame public complaints politically. But Canada can not clearly tell Brazil that the rainforest project is stopped and Brazil has to follow.
Responsibility to protect:
The main achievement of the humanitarian intervention is responsibility to protect. The responsibility to protect calls for a clearer code of conduct for humanitarian intervention and also encourages more reliance on non-military action. The study also criticizes, and seeks to reform the treatment and terminology of humanitarian action. It argues that the idea of the right to interfere is complicated, and that it should replace 'responsibility to protect.' States have a duty, in accordance with the Responsibility to Protect Theory, to interfere and protect the citizens of another state instead of having the right to interfere in the actions of other States. There are three phases to this duty: prevention, response and reconstruction. In certain circles, such as a handful of European and African nations in Canada, and among those advocating human security, the Responsibility to Protect has gained strong support, but others have been criticized as some Asian nations are among the main dissidents.[footnoteRef:12077] [12077: Caplan, L. (2003). State immunity, human rights, and jus cogens: a critique of the normative hierarchy theory. The American Journal of International Law, 97, 741-781.
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Human Rights and law:
As far as human rights and humanitarian law are...