Co-operation, Competition and Collateral Damage in Humanitarian Interventions

Abstract

The large number of so-called humanitarian interventions in which military power has been applied in wars or violent conflicts during the last 15 years is unprecedented in the history of the United Nations (UN). The reconstruction and post-conflict programmes, which are carried out with explicit reference to humanitarian concerns by the UN, are also of a new quality Beyond such UN deployments in wars and violent conflicts the military assists occasionally when natural disasters or catastrophes require quick and bold operations, as for example on a smaller scale following the floods in 2000 in Mozambique and on a larger scale after the Tsunami devastation in Asia at the end of 2004.²⁵