Humanitarian Intervention Case Study

Can Humanitarian Intervention Be Used to Alleviate Human Suffering and Rights Abuses?
The clash between State sovereignty and the protection of human rights abuses through humanitarian intervention still remains prominent in international relations today. The international community faces a dilemma of allowing violations of human rights in defence of maintaining State sovereignty and intervention (Ludlow 1999). Humanitarian intervention can be understood as the use of coercive action or military force in another state without their permission aimed at “preventing or ending widespread and grave violation of the fundamental human rights of individuals other than their own citizens” (Kantareva 2011, p. 1). As Helen Burkhalter, human rights activist,
There were many recent circumstances where human rights were violated that can be used to analyse the negative effects of non-intervention. The focus will be on the genocide and civil war in Rwanda, 1994, which killed 800,000 Rwandans (Pape, 2012), and is often considered one of the biggest failures of the international community. Although international law has codified the standard against genocide, rather than increasing UN involvement as the situation worsened, the United Nations (UN) reduced their United Nations Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) peacekeeping force (Ludlow, 1999). Ludlow (1999) writes that only when several warnings of a major humanitarian crisis growing out of proportion in Rwanda were made, did the UN sent UNAMIR II troops and the French-led Operation Turquoise to provide security in the region, notably without any other major powers providing their own forces. Ultimately, these actions came too late. The Commander of UNAMIR, Major-General Romeo Dallaire, argues that expansion of the peace-keeping troops could have “prevented the massacres in the southern and western parts of the country because they didn 't start until early May nearly a month after the war had started” (Ludlow, 1999, p. 17). Non-intervention or inaction in Rwanda was consequently more costly than the use of humanitarian intervention
However, even if humanitarian intervention is a simple and a short term solution, it does not mean that the action, which can prevent the loss of life and gross violations of human rights in the case of Rwanda, should not be undertaken. Rather it suggests that the international community should also commit time and resources to economic and social development programs (Ludlow, 1999). Similarly the R2P compliments humanitarian intervention with assistance for long term peace and promotion of development and effective governance (Lu