All or nothing: Are there any “merely permissible” armed humanitarian interventions?

Abstract

After World War II, human-rights standards became international law, but the legitimacy of their enforcement would not be recognized for quite some time. If anything, the ban on foreign intervention to defend human rights was strengthened following the inception of the United Nations, which has as its foundation the “principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.” It was not until the 1990s that a new norm of international relations began to emerge. In his 1999 Annual Report, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan made reference to the “developing international norm in favour of intervention to protect civilians.” The following year, Human Rights Watch applauded the “evolution in public mo..