32768 - New Humanitarian intervention

N. Lygeros

A classical humanitarian intervention should be understood as an intervention in another state without military force to alleviate mass human suffering. This idea comes from the initial work of Hugo Grotius. But this classical option has many problems. That’s why United Nations use also another approach to help people with its own blue army. The problem still persists when we have a case of barbarity. For this specific case, the international law has evolved and use now in a practical way the droit d’ ingérence. Its idea is rather simple: we can’t let people die without doing anything. This means practically that the intervention should be done even where it is formally and officially forbidden. In fact we have an activation of one of the Rights of Mankind i.e. Mankind has the right to protect itself from barbarity. In this new approach Mankind can use its power and even its military force on a state of barbarity to stop its actions against innocent people. In this sense, we have a really new humanitarian intervention and that’s why we prefer to use the expression droit d’ ingérence because it is in fact the Intervention of Humanity, nothing less.