Human rights are not only inalienable, but also universal. The failure of the international community to intervene has resulted in the brutal violations of these rights in multiple states, perhaps best underscored by the on-going conflict and humanitarian crisis in Darfur (United Nations 1; UNICEF 1). Against the background of the Darfur crisis, this paper sets forth the international norms/law on humanitarian intervention, as well as uses international relations theories to determine the legitimacy of intervention in Darfur. It asserts that genocide and other grave (and widespread) crimes against humanity in the region are extreme injustices that threaten humanity as a whole, and thus the international community has a moral duty to prevent/stop it, even if it takes actual or threatened force.
Darfur is Sudan’s westernmost territory, defined by political marginalization and environmental vulnerability. The neglect of the otherwise vast and sparsely populated region is such that it is bereft of government services, but its situation has rendered it politically important for Libya, Algeria, and Sudan. During the 1984 famine, Khartoum’s indifference cost 85,000 lives. The intervening period has been characterized by the emergence of Arab supremacist ideologies in Khartoum galvanized by the conflicts between black farmers and Arab pastoralists, identity mobilization by political opportunists and the intractable war between the government and the then rebel movement, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM/A). Between 2003 and 2007, upwards of 200,000 people were killed, while a further 1.6 million people may have died over the past two decades. Of the 6.2 million people living in Darfur, 2.7 million have been displaced from their homes while a further 2 million are directly affected by conflict. Evidence of continuing, systematic and widespread ethnic cleansing by, or with the acquiescence of Khartoum exists, but international intervention has remained slow.
International Intervention in Darfur
The twin principles of non-use of force and non-intervention comprise the cardinal rules underlying the internal system, not least because they are necessary to ensure the maintenance of international security and peace. The UN Security Council must sanction any infringement upon these principles. While it is clear in retrospect, evidence of on-going human rights abuses is often scarce and contested, circumstances that often weigh heavily in favour of the principles of non-intervention and sovereignty. Specifically, section 2(3) and 2(4) of the UN Charter provides that states resolve conflicts peacefully and refrain from threats of force, except as provided for under Chapter VII (which does not, however, address interventions in civil conflicts). In Darfur’s case, humanitarian intervention amounts to the threatened and/or actual employment of force across state borders by one or more states, with the intention of averting and/or ending grave and widespread human rights violations, without Sudan’s permission. With multiple human rights abuses including the Rwandan Genocide, Darfur and other areas, the international community has adopted another norm i.e. the Responsibility to Protect, agreed at the UN World Summit in 2005.
According to the General Assembly Resolution in 2005, any state that failed to protect people threatened with human rights abuses, and where diplomatic means fail to persuade such a state to act accordingly, would result in the international community acting decisively and timely to prevent and/or end such crimes. This resolution is referred to in the UN Security Council Resolutions 1674 and 1706, on which basis, UN peacekeeping forces was deployed in Darfur in 2006. This is in tandem with multiple international legislations, among them, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the UN Charter (1945). Accordingly, signatories have a legal and moral obligation to prevent and punish perpetrators of genocide, and other similar human rights abuses. Particularly, genocide has assumed the status if the international customary law, by which it is thought that the international community has a legitimate concern to ensure that it is prevented/ended.
The international experience in the implementation of humanitarian interventions has been mixed. According to Bajoria and McMahon (2013), the invocation of the Responsibility to Protect in Resolution 1973 that saw the intervention in Libya and a subsequent regime change, prompted protestations that the doctrine amounted to a cover for regime change (p. 1). Libya has remained unstable since, further discouraging the involvement of the international community in Darfur and Syria, lest regime changes spawns lawlessness that has spawned ISIS. Effectively, the international intervention requires that a careful balance is struck between humanitarian intervention and the two cardinal principles. According to the pluralist theory, humanitarian intervention should be strictly prohibited because it lacks the principles that should govern it, especially since it fundamentally weakens non-intervention and sovereignty principles, which in turn threatens the stability of the international system. On the other hand, neoclassical and neoliberal realism provides that since all humans seek to consolidate more power, power struggles among people and nations are inevitable, including struggles over the modes of acquisition and maintenance of such power (Yoshida 1; Dowell 18). Effectively, intervention is justifiable if it serves to preserve these interests.
Further, the justification for humanitarian intervention in Darfur is found in liberal political philosophy, which asserts that one of a state’s primary function is the protection of human rights. Genocide and other grave human rights violations amount to the commission of extreme injustices against the community of nations/humanity, and thus it humanitarian intervention is morally legitimate to stem the crimes. Where intervention does not threaten their basic national interests, states not only retain a moral responsibility to intervene, but also have an obligation to act in a timely and decisive manner to prevent/stop extreme injustices against humanity. Contrary to pluralist insistence on the sacredness of Sudan’s sovereignty and non-intervention in its internal affairs, international norms conditionally support both justice and order, depending on the circumstances. Humanitarian intervention is a permissive international norm, but one, which is expected to be enforced through the agency of state actors, whose behaviour is not determined by it, but influenced by it, hence the failure.
The on-going human rights violations in Darfur are reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide, only that the tragedy has been unfolding several decades. The international community’s indifference that saw upwards of 0.8 million Rwandese lose their lives is equal, unmistakably evident in Darfur. Evidence of systematic and widespread ethnic cleansing continues to mount, and it is evident that the UN peacekeeping force stationed in the region has not been as effective, in the same way that a similar force was impotent in stemming the Rwandese tragedy. As such, the international community needs exercise its duty to intervene to stop, and prevent further human rights abuses. This is a legal and moral obligation owed to the people of Darfur, and to humanity.
Works Cited
Bajoria, Jayshree and Robert McMahon. "The Dilemma of Humanitarian Intervention." Council on Foreign Relations (2013): http://www.cfr.org/humanitarian-intervention/dilemma-humanitarian-intervention/p16524.
Bellamy, Alex J. "The Responsibility to Protect — Five Years On." Ethics & International Affairs , 24 ,no. 2 (2010): 143 – 169. Web.
Dowell, Amy. "The International Community and Intervention In Cases Of Genocide ." POLIS Student Journal Vol.1 (1) (2009): 1-38. Web.
United Nations. Background Information on the Responsibility to Protect. 17 June 2014. 15 July 2015. <http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/about/bgresponsibility.shtml>.
Yoshida, Yoki. "A Theoretical Assessment of Humanitarian Intervention and R2P." Council on Foreign Relations (2013): http://www.e-ir.info/2013/01/16/from-kosovo-to-libya-theoretical-assessment-of-humanitarian-intervention-and-the-responsibility-to-protect/.
