There is no doubt that the principle of non-intervention remains a well-established part of international law. The prohibition of intervention "is a corollary of every state's right to sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence" Oppenheim's International Law, p The International Court was in no doubt about the existence of the principle in the Nicaragua case. As the International Court of Justice said in its judgment in the Nicaragua case, "[t]he principle of non-intervention involves the right of every sovereign State to conduct its affairs without outside interference; though examples of trespass against this principle are not infrequent, the Court considers that it is part and parcel of customary international law.
It went on to say that "the principle forbids all States or groups of States to intervene directly or indirectly in the internal or external affairs of other States" and that "a prohibited intervention must accordingly be one bearing on matters in which each State is permitted, by the principle of State sovereignty, to decide freely. One of these is the choice of a political, economic, social and cultural system, and the formulation of foreign policy.
Intervention is wrongful when it uses methods of coercion in regard to such choices, which must remain free ones. In DRC V. Article 2. If the existence of the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of States is beyond doubt, its exact content is far from clear.
In the Nicaragua case, the International Court considered only those aspects of the principle that appeared relevant to the dispute before it para. Apart from the prohibition on the use of force Article 2.
Much may depend upon the context, and on relations between the States, the general state of society in the States concerned and their level of political development. For example, it seems to be still well-established the diplomats should not interfere in the internal affairs of the State to which they are accredited. Article VI recognises only territorial jurisdiction, as well as the jurisdiction of an international criminal tribunal. Military force and violation of territorial sovereignty can be lawfully undertaken only if they are permissible within the terms of the UN Charter.
The solution, it is submitted, is to amend the Charter. That document does provide a mechanism for its amendment, so why is it not used? Is it because there is insufficient real as opposed to token political consensus among the international community which sees such a doctrine as a means of permitting intervention too easily see below. Some might argue that was indeed the case in Libya.
The Rome Statute created an International Criminal Court which can exercise criminal jurisdiction for offences set out in articles 6 genocide , 7 crimes against humanity and 8 war crimes , subject to the principle of complementarity where the state to which the accused belongs may exercise criminal jurisdiction instead.
Nothing in this Protocol shall be invoked for the purpose of affecting the sovereignty of a State or the responsibility of the government, by all legitimate means, to maintain or re-establish law and order in the State or to defend the national unity and territorial integrity of the State. Nothing in this Protocol shall be invoked as a justification for intervening, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the armed conflict or in the internal or external affairs of the High Contracting Party in the territory of which that conflict occurs.
There is also currently an international armed conflict between the NATO-led coalition forces and the al-Gaddafi forces. Responsibility to Protect [13]. The UN has understandably become concerned about the plight of oppressed people and has developed the concept of R2P Responsibility to Protect , based on the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in The Evans Commission , [14] and articulated in in a diluted form at the World Summit by the then Secretary General, Kofi Annan, in his report on UN Reform priorities.
This said, at paragraph In the wake of these conflicts, a new understanding of the concept of security is evolving. Once synonymous with the defence of territory from external attack, the requirements of security today have come to embrace the protection of communities and individuals from internal violence. New approaches in this area could include establishing a mechanism to monitor compliance by all parties with existing provisions of international humanitarian law….
And events during the s demonstrated on too many occasions that even a decision by the Security Council to authorize international action to address situations of grave humanitarian concern was no guarantee that any action would be taken, or taken effectively.
The Security Council should take into account in all its deliberations that, if it fails to discharge its responsibility to protect in conscience-shocking situations crying out for action, concerned states may not rule out other means to meet the gravity and urgency of that situation — and that the stature and credibility of the United Nations may suffer thereby.
Kofi Annan emphasized R2P was not to be confused with humanitarian intervention, but was to ensure that nations acted if another Rwanda loomed, when. R2P developed at the World Summit [17] as a clear and unambiguous acceptance by all governments of the collective international responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Nations agreed a willingness to take timely and decisive collective action for this purpose, through the SC, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to do so. She went on to say, at p. Nonetheless, the absence of use of force criteria did expose one of the ongoing sources of anxiety and preoccupation for some states — the potential abuse of the norm by powerful states through unilateral or regional intervention.
This, it is suggested, is a significant omission and underlines the necessity to bring a situation within the provisions of the Charter. Several states insisted, however, that R2P would be misused to claim legitimacy for unilateral action. In his view,. That is the central concern and one which presents the UN with a problem in extending the limits of the Charter in the way it seeks to do.
This statement simpliciter is not sufficient, it is suggested, to oust the provisions of the UN Charter. Such threats ought to be shown to exist or be imminent threats to international peace.
That is, that they are real and not possibilities, as one would expect in the analogous situation of self defence. Writing in the Economist in September , Kofi Annan said. State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined—not least by the forces of globalisation and international co-operation. States are now widely understood to be instruments at the service of their peoples, and not vice versa.
The Commission conceded, at para 1. Interestingly, article 4. The UN Charter does not contain such a provision. It becomes even more powerful when threats turn into action. Many consider that the declaration by the Security Council of a threat to international peace, as they define it, is sufficient to intervene.
T he Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, in a recent interview, produced a piece of paper from his pocket with a quote from Alexander Gorchakov, a 19th-century Russian prince who served as the tsar's foreign minister.
It is unacceptable to use force in international relations, especially by the countries who consider themselves leaders of civilisation. As ministers in the US, UK and France push for greater intervention to prevent Syria's bloodshed, Lavrov's remark stands not only as a rebuke to the ambitions of those who would do more to stop Bashar al-Assad, but to an entire doctrine of humanitarian intervention — Responsibility to Protect R2P — whose future is uncertain.
Drawn up by the UN in response to the wars of the s, not least in Bosnia and Rwanda, which both saw atrocities that would be defined as genocidal, R2P was adopted by the UN as a "norm" for dealing with conflicts where civilians were under attack in Its language has been referred to — or invoked directly — to justify the French interventions in Ivory Coast in , in Mali earlier this year, and the Nato-led no-fly zone imposed over Libya during the conflict that led to the fall of the Gaddafi regime.
But now, facing precisely the kind of terrible conflict the doctrine was designed to mitigate or largely prevent, the brave new UN model for protecting civilian victims of war has stalled. As both the US and the UK's defence secretaries indicated last week that they are examining different military options, a debate has erupted over the future of military interventions on humanitarian grounds, and their claimed necessity. Those arguments have ranged from the moral to the utilitarian and the self-interested — witness the argument that by not acting the US, in particular, damages its future "credibility" when it threatens the use of force.
They have been made amid a rethinking of how these military interventions are actually conducted, from the large-scale operations and expensive, flawed, nation-building efforts that were seen in Iraq and Afghanistan to "lighter footprint" interventions seen recently in Libya, Mali and Ivory Coast. Opponents of different kinds of intervention in Syria have cited complex practical problems, including how to arm a rebel side numbering a significant minority of jihadist fighters.
But one of the biggest stumbling blocks has been how R2P itself has been applied in the recent past — not least in Libya. Gareth Evans, Australia's former foreign minister, is also an international lawyer jointly responsible for drafting the document taken on by the UN in
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