Abstract
This book offers an account and evaluation of the use of safety zones in the 1990s. In April 1991, the United States, Britain and France, with the tacit approval of the Security Council, sent troops into northern Iraq to create a safe haven for the Kurds fleeing from Saddam Hussein’s repression. In May 1993, the Security Council designated six ‘safe areas…free from any armed attack or any other hostile act’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina in an attempt to protect Muslims from ethnic cleansing by Serbs.1 In May 1994, the Security Council mandated a strengthened United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to ‘contribute to the security and protection of displaced persons, refugees and civilians at risk in Rwanda through the establishment and maintenance, where feasible, of secure humanitarian areas’,2 though such zones were never created. In June 1994, authorized by the Security Council to launch a temporary operation under national command and control, France chose to set up a ‘zone humanitaire sûre’ (ZHS) as a means to contribute to the ‘security and protection of displaced persons, refugees and civilians at risk in Rwanda’.3 In each case, with implicit or explicit backing by the Security Council, some combination of the United States, Britain, France, and their allies intervened, or considered intervening, militarily through the creation of safety zones, variously called safe havens, safe areas or zones humanitaires sûres, in order to ensure the security of civilians and displaced persons targeted by extreme violence.
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Notes
On safety zones, see Comité International de la Croix Rouge (CICR), ‘Zones Sanitaires et Zones de Sécurité’, Revue Internationale de la Croix Rouge 82 (1951), 442–483 and 628–662;
Karin Landgren, ‘Safety Zones and International Protection: A Dark Grey Area’, International Journal of Refugee Law 7 (1995), 436–458;
Jean-Philippe Lavoyer, ‘International Humanitarian Law, Protected Zones and the Use of Force’, in UN Peacekeeping in Trouble: Lessons Learned from the Former Yugoslavia: Peacekeepers’ Views on the Limits and Possibilities of the United Nations in a Civil War-Like Conflict, eds, Wolfgang Biermans and Martin Vadset (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 262–279;
Yves Sandoz, ‘The Establishment of Safety Zones for Persons Displaced within Their Country of Origin’, in International Legal Issues Arising under the United Nations Decade of International Law, eds, Najeeb Al-Nauimi and Richard Meese (London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1995), pp. 899–927;
and Maurice Torrelli, ‘Les Zones de Sécurité’, Revue Générale de Droit International Public (1995) 99, 787–849.
1907 Hague Convention IV Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, in Adam Roberts and Richard Guelff, eds, Documents on the Laws of War, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 78.
See Ibid., 448–455, and Jean S. Pictet, ed., Commentary I Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field (Geneva: ICRC, 1952), pp. 208–209.
See Ibid., 458–459 and Bernard Wasserstein, Secret War in Shanghai (London: Profile Books, 1998), pp. 18, 61.
All articles pertaining to safety zones in humanitarian law are merely permissive and not mandatory, as states proved reluctant to accept stronger commitments. See Geoffrey Best, War & Law Since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 116–117.
12 August 1949 Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, in Documents on the Laws of War, eds, Guelff and Roberts, pp. 306–307. See also Jean S. Pictet, ed., Commentary IV Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Geneva: ICRC, 1958), pp. 118–133.
8 June 1977 Geneva Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, in Documents on the Laws of War, eds, Roberts and Guelff, pp. 454–456. See also Yves Sandoz, Christophe Swinarski and Bruno Zimmermann, eds, Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Geneva: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), pp. 697–712.
The text of this ICRC mediated agreement can be found in Marco Sassoli and Antoine A. Bouvier, eds, How Does Law Protect in War? Cases, Documents and Teaching Materials on Contemporary Practice in International Humanitarian Law (Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1999), pp. 1055–1056.
See for instance Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 5th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), p. 236.
Many theorists have called for an exploration of the connection between rationality and norms, suggesting that a simple dichotomy is far too naive. See Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, in Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein et al., (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1999), pp. 271–272;
S. Neil MacFarlane and Thomas Weiss, ‘Political Interest and Humanitarian Action’, Security Studies 10 (Autumn 2000), 113–115;
and Andrew Hurrell, ‘Conclusion: International Law and the Changing Constitution of International Society’, in The Role of Law in International Politics: Essays in International Relations and International Law, ed. Michael Byers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 328.
William E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse (Oxford: Martin Robertson & Company, 1983), pp. 55–56.
Jane J. Mansbridge, ‘The Rise and Fall of Self-Interest in the Explanation of Political Life’, in Beyond Self-interest, ed. Jane J. Mansbridge (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 3–22.
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: the Macmillan Press, 1977), p. 13.
Andrew Hurrell, ‘International Society and the Study of Regimes: A Reflective Approach’, in Regime Theory and International Relations, ed. Volker Rittberger (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 59.
Michael Byers, Custom, Power and the Power of Rules: International Relations and Customary International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 6.
For a similar point, see Louis Henkin, How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979) p. 331.
See Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations; E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1946),
and Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables’, in International Regimes, ed. Stephen D. Krasner (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 1.
See Byers, ed., Role of Law in International Politics; Abram Chayes and Antonia Chayes, The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreements (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995); Henkin, How Nations Behave;
and Anne-Marie Slaughter et al., ‘International Law and International Relations Theory: A New Generation of Interdisciplinary Scholarship’, American Journal of International Law 92, 3 (July 1998), 367–397.
Martha Finnemore, ‘Constructing Norms of Humanitarian Intervention’, in The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, ed. Peter J. Katzenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 157.
Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 1–2.
Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power: Essays in International Relations Theory (London: Westview Press, 1989), pp. 128, 161.
I adapt similar definitions from Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, p. 22; and Charles Kegley, Jr. and Gregory A. Raymond, When Trust Breaks Down: Alliance Norms and World Politics (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), p. 14.
Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, ‘Ideas and Foreign Policy: an Analytical Framework’, in Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, ed. Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane (London: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 9.
Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 11.
Adam Roberts, ‘Humanitarian War: Military Intervention and Human Rights’, International Affairs 69 (1993), 243.
See Frits Kalshoven, ‘The Undertaking to Respect and Ensure Respect in All Circumstances: From Tiny Seed to Ripening Fruit’, Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 2 (1999), 3–61.
See generally Hermann Mosler, The International Society as a Legal Community (Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1980);
and George Abi-Saab, ‘Introduction’, in Conference on International Law: The Concept of Jus Cogens in International Law, Papers and Proceedings. Lagonissi, April 3–8, 1966 (Geneva: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1967), pp. 7–15.
Author interview with Sir Franklin Berman, Oxford, 6 June 2001. Some scholars, mainly in reference to the recent practice of the Security Council in the humanitarian emergencies of the 1990s, contend that Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions does entail a legal obligation on the part of states to act to ensure respect for humanitarian law. See Laurence Boisson de Chazournes and Louigi Condorelli, ‘Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions revisited: Protecting collective interests’, International Review of the Red Cross 82 (2000), 67–87; Hans-Peter Gasser, ‘Ensuring Respect for the Geneva Conventions and Protocols: the Role of Third Party States and the United Nations’, in Armed Conflict and the New Law Volume II: Effecting Compliance, ed. Hazel Fox and Michael A. Meyer (London: the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 1993), pp. 15–49.
See Andrew P. Cortell and James W. Davis, Jr., ‘How Do International Institutions Matter? The Domestic Impact of International Rules and Norms’, International Studies Quarterly (1996) 40, 452–454; and McElroy, Morality and American Foreign Policy, p. 44.
See Audie Klotz, Norms and International Relations: The Struggle Against Apartheid (London: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 28.
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© 2005 Carol McQueen
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McQueen, C. (2005). Introduction. In: Humanitarian Intervention and Safety Zones. Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230554979_1
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