Humanitarian intervention is a direct challenge to the notion of sovereignty?

From the standpoint of international law, intervention is the violent intervention of one sovereign state in the internal or external affairs of another - military, political or economic.

The question is the subject of normative and empirical debates, from the moment that international law was developed , and there is no standard legal definition for it. However, it is explained in this way: under certain circumstances, external forces are obliged to intervene in the affairs of another state in order to protect people in it under extensive violations of their civil rights, even if there is a conflict between states.

Although, in principle, intervention is a wrongful act, some interventions in such cases are regarded as legitimate.

An example of this type of thinking was the debate held in 1996 about Canada's proposal to intervene in the affairs of Zaire (now Congo) to protect the millions of Hutu refugees who survived the genocide in Rwanda. They were at risk of extermination by the Tutsis, supported by the Rwandan government, and because of the Zairian civil war. Canadians argued that the rights of civilians were violated, and this outweighed any other considerations. Those who opposed said that humanitarian needs alone can not justify interference from outside. In addition, an argument was put forward that long-term intervention in itself is fraught with uncertainty.

What should be done in such a crisis as the genocide in Rwanda, when the international community is trying to stop the killings?

In the context of international law, the intervention of one state in the affairs of another for the purpose of protecting innocent people is seen as a humanitarian intervention if there is a sanction from the UN Security Council. But can countries, acting with the permission of the UN Security Council, fulfill the declared "duties"? Or is this doctrine essentially a "Trojan horse," an abuse of a stronger power? Do such interventions serve as an excuse for states that unleash conflicts in foreign countries?

When countries, without internal support for bloodless political interventions, send their armed forces to the territories of other states, to a large extent they pursue their narrow national interests: seizure of territory, gaining geostrategic advantage, control over precious natural resources. Leaders try to win public support, describing their actions in terms of high moral goals - the establishment of peace, justice, democracy in the conflict zone. It is worth recalling that historically, many campaigns launched by the European colonial powers in the 19th century were based on considerations of universal human values

In Rwanda, in 1991, as expected, French intervention under the auspices of the UN would be to carry out Operation Turquoise. But, using the humanitarian imperative as a cover, France continued to try to influence events in the Great Lakes region.

In 2003, the US-British invasion and occupation of Iraq were also designated as humanitarian intervention by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Taking into account that classical interventions are, in principle, political in nature and include the imposition of their will by force, then humanitarian intervention is a direct challenge to the very notion of sovereignty.

The public in North America and Western Europe, with all the talk of compassion for other nations, easily agrees to use military force to finish, in their opinion, with disasters in another country, without seriously thinking about what the price of such "sympathy" is in Morally, politically and economically?

Today, humanitarian intervention is basically the brainchild of the UN, some organizations that are unable to work peacefully in conflict zones. These groups are the most ardent of its preachers. The French diplomat Bernard Kouchner even popularized the legal theory of the scientist Mario Bettati "about the right to intervene".

The term itself can be used in other meanings. For example, as a set of economic measures of domestic policy: procurement intervention, grain intervention. In both cases, these are the ways by which the state tries to regulate the prices of agricultural products (raw materials, food, grain).