POL SCI 5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: International Humanitarian Law, Collective Action, Genocide Convention
8 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Humanitarian intervention: coercive action by a state or states usually involving force in another state without that state"s consent to stop human right violations or violations of international humanitarian law. Used to be to collect a debt, almost never for humanitarian reasons. A lot of this is hard to understand from traditional ir theory: No national interest on the part of the intervener. Ex: us intervention in somalia was purely humanitarian. Neorealists & neoliberals have struggled to explain these events. Outsiders (often ngos) might issue early assessments of a situation. 1990: bush called on iraqi people to overthrow saddam hussein. Intervention can be military, can be a warning of further actions or imposing deadlines with threat of sanctions or arms embargo, etc. Sanctions are seen as preferable to military intervention. Depends on the type of sanctions, vulnerability of regimes, etc. Arms embargo: if bad things are happening, prevent more weapons being brought in.
