The Customary International Law Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention: Its Current Validity under the U.N. Charter
![handle is hein.journals/calwi4 and id is 211 raw text is: THE CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW DOC-
TRINE OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION:
ITS CURRENT VALIDITY UNDER THE
U.N. CHARTER
JEAN-PIERRE L. FONTEYNE*
The Indian action in the 1971 Bangladesh crisis' has re-
cently revived the debate among scholars on the question of the
legality of unilateral2 humanitarian3 intervention4 under the U.N.
Charter.
* Lecturer in Law, University of the West Indies, Faculty of Law. J.D.,
State University of Ghent; LL.M., University of Virginia, School of Law.
The assistance of Professor Richard B. Lillich is gratefully acknowledged.
All textual translations were provided by the author.
1. See generally INT'L COMM'N OF JURISTS, THE EVENTS IN EAST PAKn-
sr~AN, 1971 (1972) [hereinafter cited as INT'L COMM'N OF JURISTS]; Nanda, A
Critique of the United Nations Inaction in the Bangladesh Crisis, 49 DENVER
L. J. 53 (1972) [hereinafter cited as Nanda, Critique]; Nanda, Self-Determination
in International Law: The Tragic Tale of Two Cities-Islamabad (West Pakistan)
and Dacca (East Pakistan) 66 AM. J. INT'L L. 321 (1972) [hereinafter cited as
Nanda, Self-Determination]; Documents: Civil War in Pakistan, 4 N. Y. U. J.
INT'L & POL. 524 (1971).
2. Throughout this article the term unilateral intervention will be used as
a generic term to denote intervention either by a single State (individual inter-
vention) or by a group of States (collective intervention). Recent examples of
the former are provided by the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary, the 1958
U.S. intervention in Lebanon, the 1969 British mini-intervention in Anguilla,
and the Indian intervention in East Pakistan. The latter can be illustrated by
the joint French-British-Israeli intervention in the 1956 Suez crisis, the SEATO
intervention in South Vietnam, the 1964 Stanleyville airdrop carried out in coop-
eration by Belgium, the United States, and the United Kingdom, the intervention
by the Members of the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia (1968), and the joint
U S.-South Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia (1970). Unilateral intervention
is essentially characterized by the lack of formal authorization from any compe-
tent international body, universal or regional, and in the case of collective uni-
lateral intervention, by the non-institutionalized character of the association of
States carrying out the intervention. Unilateral intervention must be distin-
guished on the one hand from intervention by armed forces under the direct
control of the United Nations (Korea, UNEF, ONUC, Cyprus) or of an ap-
propriate regional organization (1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic,
in its second stage, after the take-over by the Organization of American
States), and on the other hand from individual or collective intervention duly
authorized by such an organization (first stage of the intervention in the Domin-
ican Republic, carried out by the United States, but subsequently ratified by
the Organization of American States).
3. Humanitarian intervention has been defined as:](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/calwi4&div=17&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Customary International Law Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention: Its Current Validity under the U.N. Charter
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