Clash of the world trichotomy: humanitarian vs state interests during humanitarian intervention

Abstract

Humanitarian intervention is an increasingly common phenomenon in international affairs. During the Cold War human made disasters were considered by the state system on the basis of their role in the larger east-west confrontation. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire these same types of events are now of little importance to the direct interests of the majority of states. The lack of interest shown by the system of states allowed the worlds media to show the actual suffering of the victims and expose the lack of donor states help to these people. Due to domestic pressures donor states, through the use of their armed forces, have become actively involved along with the United Nations (UN) and Non Governmental Organisations (NGO) in intervening in the sovereign territory of states in order to help the victims of civil wars or internal conflicts when it is felt that there is no political authority in the state that is willing to do so. The interventions however have not had much success in dealing with the humanitarian problems, most have involved a quick-fix or political solution that has not addressed the long-term development problems needed by the victims. The most notable reason put forward for the failure of humanitarian intervention is the poor inter-organisational relationship between the intervening members and the coordination between them. The objective of this thesis is to address these inter-organisational problems and offer solutions for improving them. What will also be addressed and shown to be of more critical importance is the different world systems which each intervening member is associated with. The conflict between humanitarian values and the interests of the system of states will be shown to be of critical importance for the failure of humanitarian intervention.