The study of Humanitarian Intervention in international system

SUMMARY

The study of Humanitarian Intervention in international system using the Libyan Crisis of 2011 as a case study has expose us to the concept of humanitarian intervention and how it as affected the sovereignty of states in the international system. Sovereignty is a concept which gives state the right to exist, make laws and decide the course of its foreign policy without external interference in the international system to respect each other right to independent. Sovereignty is looked upon as the exclusive freedom (power) that states have – under international law –within their own territories to independently exercise the functions of the state, both as regards the state's internal life and its external relations. A humanitarian intervention is an armed intervention in another state, without the agreement of that state, to address (the threat of) a humanitarian disaster, in particular caused by grave and large-scale violations of fundamental human rights. This definition was adopted by a NATO seminar in Scheveningen on the topic in November 1999. The key aspects of this definition are related to sovereignty and human rights. Firstly, for an action to be intervention, sovereignty 54 of the state being intervened in must be breached. Secondly, for an intervention to be humanitarian, the desire to address violations of human rights should be the driving force in the intervention decision.