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Application of the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine to Justify the Establishment of Safe Zones to Alleviate Human Suffering

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Safe Zone

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Abstract

The term ‘humanitarian intervention’ may be defined as a ‘forceful intervention for humanitarian purposes by a third State or States to save the people of a State from their own Government’s action or inaction.’ Adelman indicates that the establishment of safe zones, as a form of military action, may well be considered within the scope of humanitarian intervention since such zones would not only serve to prevent refugees from crossing an international border, but also ensure security to those at risk within their national homeland.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    International Law Association (ILA), Draft Report on Aggression and the Use of Force (Johannesburg Conference, May 2016) at 15.

  2. 2.

    Howard Adelman, ‘The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: The Case of the Kurdish Refugees’, 6(1) Public Affairs Quarterly 61 (1992), at 62.

  3. 3.

    SC Res 770, 12 August 1992, op para 2; SC Res 776, 14 September 1992, op para 2.

  4. 4.

    SC Res 794, 3 December 1992, preamble and op para 10.

  5. 5.

    SC Res 872, 5 October 1993, op paras 2, 3; SC Res 929, 22 June 1994, op para 3.

  6. 6.

    SC Res 940, 31 July 1994, op para 4.

  7. 7.

    SC Res 1264, 15 September 1999, op para 3.

  8. 8.

    SC Res 1973, 17 March 2011, op para 4.

  9. 9.

    ‘Speakers Call for Voluntary Suspension of Veto Rights in Cases of Mass Atrocity Crimes, as Security Council Debates Working Methods,’ Security Council 7052nd Meeting, 29 October 2013, available at http://www.un.org/press/en/2013/sc11164.doc.htm [accessed: 12 July 2016].

  10. 10.

    International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001).

  11. 11.

    GA Res 60/1, 24 October 2005, Arts 138, 139.

  12. 12.

    SC Res 1674, 28 April 2006, op para 4.

  13. 13.

    Ved P. Nanda ‘The Future Under International Law of the Responsibility to Protect after Libya and Syria’, 21(1) Michigan State International Law Review 1 (2013), at 8.

  14. 14.

    Alex Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect and the problem of military intervention’, 84(4) The Royal Institute of International Affairs 615 (2008), at 623.

  15. 15.

    ICISS, supra note 10, at XIII.

  16. 16.

    Idem, at 53–55.

  17. 17.

    e.g., Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols, ‘U.N. Security Council Powers Meet Again on Syria; No Outcome’ Reuters, 29 August 2013, available at http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE97S17R20130829 [accessed: 5 July 2016].

  18. 18.

    Aidan Hehir, ‘The Responsibility to Protect: ‘Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing’?’, 24(2) International Relations 218 (2010), at 233.

  19. 19.

    Harold Hongju Koh, ‘Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention (Part I: Political Miscues and U.S. Law)’ Just Security, 26 September 2013, available at https://www.justsecurity.org/1158/koh-syria/ [accessed: 12 July 2016]; Harold Hongju Koh, ‘Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention (Part II: International Law and the Way Forward)’ Just Security, 2 October 2013, available at https://www.justsecurity.org/1506/koh-syria-part2/ [accessed: 12 July 2016]; Harold Hongju Koh, ‘Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention (Part III—A Reply)’ Just Security, 10 October 2013, available at https://www.justsecurity.org/1863/syria-law-humanitarian-intervention-part-iii-reply/ [accessed: 12 July 2016].

  20. 20.

    Major Jeremy A. Haugh, ‘Beyond R2P: A Proposed Test For Legalizing Unilateral Armed Humanitarian Intervention’, 221 Military Law Review 1 (2014), at 21.

  21. 21.

    ICISS, supra note 10, at 13.

  22. 22.

    Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company, Limited (Belgium v Spain), Second Phase, Judgment, ICJ Reports 1970, 3, paras 33–34.

  23. 23.

    Myron Weiner and Münz Rainer, ‘Migrants, refugees and foreign policy: prevention and intervention strategies’, 18(1) Third World Quarterly 25 (1997), at 27.

  24. 24.

    Myron Weiner, ‘Security, Stability, and International Migration’, 17(3) International Security 91 (1992–3), at 126.

  25. 25.

    Frank X. Njenga, ‘The Establishment of Safety Zones for Displaced Persons in Their Country of Origin’, in N. Al-Nauimi, R. Meese (eds), International Legal Issues Arising Under the United Nations Decade of International Law (The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1995) 819, at 821.

  26. 26.

    Luke T. Lee, ‘Toward a World without Refugees: The United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on International Co-operation to Avert New Flows of Refugees’, 57 The British Yearbook of International Law 317 (1986), at 332.

  27. 27.

    Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Report on the Work of the Organization from the Forty-seventh to Forty-eighth Session of the General Assembly (New York: United Nations, 1993) at 165.

  28. 28.

    Gil Loescher, ‘Refugees as Grounds for International Action’, in E. Newman and J. van Selm (eds) Refugee and forced displacement: International security, human vulnerability, and the state (Tokyo: UNU Press, 2003) 31, at 42; Adam Roberts, ‘Refugees and Military Intervention,’ in A. Betts and G. Loescher (eds), Refugees in International Relations (New York: OUP, 2011) 213, at 213.

  29. 29.

    See, inter alia, SC Res 688, 5 April 1991 op para 1; SC Res 794, 3 December 1992, preamble.

  30. 30.

    Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, ‘Editorial: Refugees and Security’, 11(1) International Journal of Refugee Law 1 (1999), at 3; Gil Loescher, supra note 28, at 39–40; Adam Roberts, supra note 28, at 229.

  31. 31.

    SC Res 940, 31 July 1994, preamble.

  32. 32.

    Howard Adelman, supra note 2, at 75.

  33. 33.

    GA Res 36/148, 16 December 1981.

  34. 34.

    GA Res 37/121, 16 December 1982.

    The group members were appointed by the Secretary-General, one each was nominated by Afghanistan, Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Honduras, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Thailand, Togo, the USSR, the US and Vietnam. The twenty-fifth seat was rotated among the Latin-American, African and Asian regions.

  35. 35.

    GA Res 41/324, 13 May 1986.

  36. 36.

    GA Res 41/70, 3 December 1986.

  37. 37.

    GA Res 41/324, 13 May 1986, para 63.

  38. 38.

    GA Res 41/324,13 May 1986, para 66(c).

  39. 39.

    GA Res 41/324, 13 May 1986 para 66(g).

  40. 40.

    Thomas M. Franck, Recourse To Force: State Action Against Threats And Armed Attacks (Cambridge: CUP, 2002) at 139–40.

  41. 41.

    Myron Weiner, supra note 24, at 123.

  42. 42.

    Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: OUP, 2002), at 79–82.

  43. 43.

    Idem, at 111–114.

  44. 44.

    Oona A. Hathaway, Tomas, VIctor, Brower and Liss, ‘Consent-Based Humanitarian Intervention: Giving Sovereign Responsibility Back to the Sovereign’, 46 Cornell International Law Journal 499 (2013), at 514–515.

  45. 45.

    Alan Dowty and Gil Loescher, ‘Refugee Flows as Grounds for International Action’, 21/1 International Security 43 (1996), at 62.

  46. 46.

    Oona A. Hathaway, supra note 44, at 510.

  47. 47.

    Idem, at 515.

  48. 48.

    SC Res. 1132, 8 October, 1997, op para 8.

  49. 49.

    UN Secretary-General, Fourth Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation in Sierra Leone, U.N. Doc. S/1998/249, (18 March 1998) para 6.

  50. 50.

    SC Res 688, 5 April 1991.

  51. 51.

    Nicholas J. Wheeler, supra note 42, at 215 (quoting the statement of a legal counselor to Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office).

  52. 52.

    SC Res 688, 5 April 1991, preamble.

  53. 53.

    David A. Martin, ‘Strategies for a Resistant World: Human Rights Initiatives and the Need for Alternatives to Refugee Interdiction’, 26 Cornell International Law Journal 753 (1993), at 765.

  54. 54.

    Mark R. Hutchinson, ‘Restoring Hope: UN Security Council Resolutions for Somalia and an expanded doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention’, 34 Harvard International Law Journal 624 (1993), at 633.

  55. 55.

    Nicholas J. Wheeler, supra note 42, at 167.

  56. 56.

    Idem, at 154.

  57. 57.

    Pierre Laberge, ‘Humanitarian Intervention: Three Ethical Positions’, 9 Ethics and International Affairs 15 (1995), at 31.

  58. 58.

    Oona A. Hathaway, supra note 44, at 518.

  59. 59.

    SC Res 1199, 23 September 1998, preamble.

  60. 60.

    The Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned (New York: OUP, 2000) at 163.

  61. 61.

    Idem, at 4.

  62. 62.

    Milena Sterio, ‘Humanitarian Intervention Post-Syria: Legitimate and Legal?’, 40 Brooklyn Journal of International Law 109 (2014), at 125.

  63. 63.

    Michael Byers, Kosovo: An Illegal Operation (Counsel, 1999), at 16–18.

  64. 64.

    Wilhelm. G. Grewe, The Ephocs of International Law, (transl. and rev. by Michael Byers, Berlin; New York: de Gruyter, 2000), at 487–492.

  65. 65.

    Idem, at 494.

  66. 66.

    Lassa Oppenheim, International Law, 1905–06, at 137.

  67. 67.

    Wilhelm. G. Grewe, supra note 64, at 493.

  68. 68.

    Robert Y. Jennings, ‘Some International Law Aspects of the Refugee Question’, 20 British Yearbook of International Law 98 (1939), at 111.

  69. 69.

    Gil Loescher, supra note 28, at 39.

  70. 70.

    Milena Sterio, supra note 62, at 151.

  71. 71.

    Harold Hongju Koh, supra note 19.

  72. 72.

    David Kaye, ‘Harold Koh's Case for Humanitarian Intervention’ Just Security, 7 October 2013, available at https://www.justsecurity.org/1730/kaye-kohs-case/ [accessed: 12 July 2016].

  73. 73.

    Milena Sterio, supra note 62, at 159.

  74. 74.

    UN Doc. S/1999/957, 8 September 1999, at recommendation 40.

  75. 75.

    UN Doc. A/54/549, published on 15 November 1999, at 102–107.

  76. 76.

    UN Doc. S/1999/1257, 16 December 1999, at 54–57.

  77. 77.

    ILA, supra note 1, at 19.

  78. 78.

    Albrecht Randelzhofer and Oliver Dörr, ‘Article 2(4)’, in B. Simma et al. (eds) The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary Vol. I (2nd edn, OUP, 2012) 200, at 209.

  79. 79.

    Ian Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States (Oxford: OUP, 1963), p. 267.

  80. 80.

    United Nations Conference on International Organization Documents, vol. 6 (San Francisco, 25 April 1945), at 334–335.

  81. 81.

    Oona A. Hathaway, supra note 44, at 519.

  82. 82.

    Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, ‘About 430 thousands were killed since the beginning of the Syrian revolution’, 13 September 2016, available at http://www.syriahr.com/en/?p=50612 [accessed: 14 September 2016].

  83. 83.

    Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) of the Norwegian Refugee Council, ‘Syria IDP Figures Analysis’, available at http://www.internal-displacement.org/middle-east-and-north-africa/syria/figures-analysis [accessed: 14 September 2016].

  84. 84.

    Mark Lowen, ‘Syria conflict: Life returns to Jarablus after IS flees’ BBC News, 13 September 2016, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37350970 [accessed: 14 September 2016].

  85. 85.

    Harold Hongju Koh, ‘Another Legal View of the Dissent Channel Cable on Syria’ Just Security, 20 June 2016, available at https://www.justsecurity.org/31571/legal-view-dissent-channel-cable-syria/ [accessed: 4 September 2016].

  86. 86.

    Harold Hongju Koh, ‘Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention (Part II: International Law and the Way Forward)’ Just Security, 2 October 2013, available at https://www.justsecurity.org/1506/koh-syria-part2/ [accessed: 12 July 2016].

  87. 87.

    Gil Loescher, supra note 28, at 39.

  88. 88.

    Milena Sterio, supra note 62, at 157.

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    Lokman B. Çetinkaya

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Çetinkaya, L.B. (2017). Application of the Humanitarian Intervention Doctrine to Justify the Establishment of Safe Zones to Alleviate Human Suffering. In: Safe Zone. SpringerBriefs in Law. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51997-5_4

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