Humanitarian Intervention

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Humanitarian intervention is the act when states intervene in the affairs of another state because that state is violating the basic human rights of its civilians or because it is in the intervening state’s self interest to get involved. (Humanitarian, 2008) These interventions are not specifically aimed at violating the sovereignty of a state, but rather their purpose is to protect the basic human rights of civilians during civil wars and during crime against humanity. (Humanitarian, 2008) Realism explains that humanitarian intervention came about during the genocide in Bosnia but not in Rwanda because even though it might have been the correct moral action to take, intervention in Rwanda was not in the national interest of other states. Also, there was no humanitarian intervention in the Rwanda genocide because the genocide was not explicitly known about. (Hintjens, 1999) On the other hand, humanitarian intervention occurred in Bosnia to keep the stability and peace of the international system, which is an important national interest for most states.

In 1992 Yugoslavia broke apart and from this collapse three states—Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia—became independent and went to war with each other. The war was over territory. (Snow, 2008) The three independent states launched militia attacks against each other and gained territory by murdering and displacing the unarmed civilians. (Snow, 2008) This warfare led to the genocide of Bosnians by the Serbians. (Bosnian Genocide, 2008) Serbia captured Bosnian civilians and beat and murdered them, separated them from each other, sent them to detention camps, and raped the women. (Bosnian War, 2008) The media depicted the Bosnian genocide like the Holocaust. There were images of ...

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...Pearson Longman, 2008.

Hintjens, Helen M. "Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda." The Journal of Modern African Studies 37 (1999): 241-286. JSTOR. 4 June 2008. .

“Humanitarian Intervention.” Wikipedia. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 04 June 2008 < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_intervention >

Pieterse, Jan N. "Sociology of Humanitarian Intervention: Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia Compared." The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Intervention. Les Dilemmes De L'Intervention 18 (1997): 71-93. JSTOR. 4 June 2008.

“Rwanda.” Wikipedia. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 04 June 2008 .

Snow, Donald M. Cases in International Relations Portraits of the Future. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008.

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