Tragedies in Northern Iraq, Liberia, Yugoslavia, and Haiti - Revisiting the Validity of Humanitarian Intervention under International Law - Part I
![handle is hein.journals/denilp20 and id is 313 raw text is: Tragedies in Northern Iraq, Liberia,
Yugoslavia, and Haiti - Revisiting the
Validity of Humanitarian Intervention
Under International Law - Part I*
VED P. NANDA**
I. INTRODUCTION
Several recent situations call for a reexamination of humanitarian
intervention, a controversial international law doctrine that suffers from
normative ambiguities.' These situations include: (1) the Kurdish plight
in northern Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War; (2) the tragedy of the
Liberian civil war; (3) the protracted civil war in Yugoslavia between
Croats and Serbs; and (4) the brutal oppression in Haiti following the
* Part II will appear in a forthcoming issue of the DENY. J. INT'L L. & POL'Y.
** Thompson G. Marsh Professor of Law and Director of the International Legal Stud-
ies Program, University of Denver College of Law. This is an expanded version of my re-
marks at a conference in June 1991 in Honolulu, Hawaii, entitled, Restructuring for Peace:
Challenges for the 21st Century, and sponsored by the Matsunaga Institute for Peace and
East-West Center, University of Hawaii, and the United Nations University. I gratefully
acknowledge the research assistance of Ed Allen, a third-year student at the University of
Denver College of Law, on the sections on Uganda and Kampuchea. See also Decades of
Disaster: The United Nations' Response, Hearing Before the House Select Committee on
Hunger (July 30, 1991), 102d Cong., 1st Sess., at 21-24, 66-86 (testimony and prepared
statement, respectively, by Ved Nanda, entitled, A United Nations Convention on the
Right to Food, Humanitarian Intervention, and the U.N. Response to International Disas-
ters - An International Law Perspective).
1. Voluminous literature exists on the subject. See generally FERNANDO R. TES6N, Hu-
MANITARIAN INTERVENTION - AN INQUIRY INTO LAW AND MORALITY (1988) [hereinafter
TESON]; MICHAEL WALZER, JUST AND UNJUST WARS 107-08 (1977); HUMANITARIAN INTERVEN-
TION AND THE UNITED NATIONS (Richard B. Lillich ed., 1973), and the authorities cited id. at
229-234; Michael Bazyler, Reexamining the Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention in
Light of the Atrocities in Kampuchea and Ethiopia, 23 STAN. J. INT'L L. 547 (1987); Cap-
tain Thomas E. Behuniak, The Law of the Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention by
Armed Force: A Legal Survey, 79 MIL. L. REV. 157 (1978); Ian Brownlie, Humanitarian
Intervention, in LAW AND THE CIVIL WAR IN THE MODERN WORLD 217 (John Norton Moore
ed., 1974); H. Scott Farley, State Actors, Humanitarian Intervention and International
Law: Reopening Pandora's Box, 10 GA. J. INT'L & CoMP. L. 29 (1980); Tom J. Farer, Human
Rights in Lao's Empire: The Jurisprudence War, 85 AM. J. INT'L L. 117 (1991); Jean-Pierre
L. Fonteyne, The Customary International Law Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention:
Its Current Validity under the U.N. Charter, 4 CALIF. W. INT'L L.J. 203 (1974); James A.R.
Nafziger, Self-Determination and Humanitarian Intervention in a Community of Power,
20 DENY. J. INT'L L. & POL'Y 9 (1991); Kevin Ryan, Rights, Intervention and Self-Determi-
nation, 20 DENV. J. INT'L L. & POL'Y 55 (1991); Ved P. Nanda, Humanitarian Military
Intervention, 23 WORLD VIEW, Oct. 1978, at 23; Eisuke Suzuki, A State's Provisional Com-
petence to Protect Human Rights in a Foreign State, 15 TEXAS INT'L L.J. 231 (1980).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/denilp20&div=23&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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