LL.M. / Please refer to full text to view abstract

in English The doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" has long been a controversial subject, both in law and in international relations, and remains so today. For humanitarian intervention is typical that it is a multidisciplinary issue. This problem is questionable not only from the point of view of law; however there also arise many ethic and moral dilemmas. The study handles the humanitarian intervention from the view of international law hence my aim is to outline the legal questions connected with this issue. At first it must be said that humanitarian intervention exists for a very long time although it has been subject of discussions for last ten or twenty years. What makes the humanitarian intervention such controversial point in question in contemporary international law? First of all the concept of humanitarian intervention must be distinguished from related concepts, such as "humanitarian action", "humanitarian operations", "humanitarian assistance", "intervention to protect nationals abroad", "intervention to facilitate self- determination", " pro-democratic intervention" and more other concepts closely link to humanitarian intervention If we start to concetrate just on humanitarian intervention there are questions to think about: Firstly, the main question is: What is the humanitarian...

The 1648 Peace of Westphalia created an understanding of state sovereignty free from external interference that remained largely unaltered until the last century. The horrors of the Holocaust and the significant humanitarian crises of the 20th century have presented the international community with a new type of threat to international peace and security and have sparked an ongoing conversation about the limitations of traditional sovereignty. Russia has positioned itself as a firm supporter of a strict adherence to the Westphalian concept of sovereignty, but my thesis argues that Russians do not value this interpretation as much as they claim to, and that in fact Moscow recognizes that this definition is a thing of the past. I examine Russian actions surrounding the 2011 UN-sanctioned intervention in Libya and the ongoing conflict in Syria, particularly focusing on the major differences between Russian decision-making in the two cases. I analyze transcripts of Security Council meetings in order to demonstrate that there is far more to Russian actions in Syria than Moscow’s public position suggests, and I subsequently offer a number of alternative explanations for Russian decision-making surrounding Syria. These alternative explanations demonstrate that even the Russians, who have portrayed themselves as the great defenders of traditional state sovereignty, recognize the modern limitations to strict Westphalian sovereignty and understand that this traditional definition is a thing of the past. This conclusion is significant because in demonstrating that traditional sovereignty’s greatest champion acknowledges the modern shift in the concept, I prove that the departure from strict Westphalian sovereignty is not merely a theory, but a reality.

A big dilemma in the international politics is how the human rights can be combined with the states’ sovereignty. It has been a problem for a long time for the UN to know how to react when human rights are being violated and when to be able to use a military intervention. The government of Canada established a commission named ICISS to find a solution to this dilemma. The commission presented a report in the end of 2001 called Responsibility to Protect which was accepted as a norm of UN in 2005. The rapport offers solutions for the Security Council in cases of violations of human rights in foreign states. This thesis studies what this report means and examines if it is plausible and desirable from the perspectives of realism, constructivism and liberalism. To test the plausibility and the desirability is it also reviewed if the report can be understood in different ways. It turns out that realism finds the report mostly unplausible and not desirable. The liberalism regards the report as both plausible and desirable but finds that it is failing in some parts. The constructivism reckons the report as plausible but not necessarily desirable. It is also shown that the report can be understood in different ways which reduce its plausibility and desirability. However, the report offers possible solutions to a difficult dilemma and is a serious contribution to the conflict between the state and the individual.

<p>A big dilemma in the international politics is how the human rights can be combined with the states’ sovereignty. It has been a problem for a long time for the UN to know how to react when human rights are being violated and when to be able to use a military intervention.</p><p>The government of Canada established a commission named ICISS to find a solution to this dilemma. The commission presented a report in the end of 2001 called Responsibility to Protect which was accepted as a norm of UN in 2005. The rapport offers solutions for the Security Council in cases of violations of human rights in foreign states.</p><p>This thesis studies what this report means and examines if it is plausible and desirable from the perspectives of realism, constructivism and liberalism. To test the plausibility and the desirability is it also reviewed if the report can be understood in different ways.</p><p>It turns out that realism finds the report mostly unplausible and not desirable. The liberalism regards the report as both plausible and desirable but finds that it is failing in some parts. The constructivism reckons the report as plausible but not necessarily desirable. It is also shown that the report can be understood in different ways which reduce its plausibility and desirability.</p><p>However, the report offers possible solutions to a difficult dilemma and is a serious contribution to the conflict between the state and the individual.</p>

Submitted by Leda Lopes (ledacplopes@hotmail.com) on 2017-03-10T11:59:04Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2017-03-10T19:24:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2017-03-10T19:26:46Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-10T19:26:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Bruna_Cavallari_ Dissertação.pdf: 1150900 bytes, checksum: 8338685846dae5d0d61b1adb5abb5576 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-09-23 / O fim da Guerra Fria trouxe mudanças na agenda da segurança internacional: escoamento de armas do Norte para o Sul Global, o surgimento das Novas Guerras, o fortalecimento dos Direitos Humanos, o aumento do número de democracias formais e um novo tipo de intervencionismo. Diante de questionamentos empíricos e teóricos diante de crises humanitárias de grandes proporções, a comunidade internacional foi instigada a encontrar uma harmonização entre os conceitos de soberania e Direitos Humanos. Assim, o preceito da “Responsabilidade de Proteger” surgiu e ganhou relevância na agenda de segurança internacional e nos meios políticos e acadêmicos. O objeto desta dissertação, portanto, configura-se para além de uma ideia teórica e normativa, operando concretamente no ambiente internacional através das intervenções humanitárias. Desta forma, questiona-se em que medida a sub-agenda da “Responsabilidade de Proteger” reflete as relações geopolíticas entre o Norte e o Sul Global, entre os anos 2005 e 2015. Compreendendo esta divisão Norte/Sul para além de aspectos somente geográficos e, considerando a complexidade do sistema internacional frente a classificações e divisões demonstrou-se que a “Responsabilidade de Proteger” trouxe pouca inovação prática ao cenário internacional e perpetua as assimetrias de poder entre o Norte e o Sul Global. / The end of the Cold War brought changes in the agenda of international security: flow of weapons North to the Global South, the emergence of the New Wars, the strengthening of human rights, increasing the number of formal democracies and a new type of interventionism. In the face of empirical and theoretical questions facing humanitarian crisis of major proportions, the international community was instigated to find a compromise between the concepts of sovereignty and human rights. Thus the precept of "Responsibility to Protect" emerged and gained relevance in the international security agenda and political and academic circles. The object of this paper therefore sets itself apart from a theoretical idea and rules, operating specifically in the international environment through humanitarian interventions. Thus, we question to what extent the sub-agenda of "Responsibility to Protect" reflects geopolitical relations between the North and the Global South, between 2005 and 2015. Understanding this North / South divide beyond only geographical aspects and considering the complexity of the international system against classifications and divisions demonstrated that the "Responsibility to Protect" brought little practical innovation to the international scene and perpetuates the power asymmetries between the North and the Global South

LL.M. (International Law) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

The concept of humanitarian interventions has seen increased interest especially since the end of the Cold War. During the last two decades, humanitarian interventions have been at the centre of the emerging doctrine of the responsibility to protect. Through collecting and analysing the United Nations documents and historical experience, this thesis concludes that within contemporary representation of the humanitarian interventions, inaction is not a viable answer to mass violations of human rights. However, as the case of Darfur shows, this renewed commitment towards collective action has not been translated into actions yet. The practice of humanitarian interventions and the role of the United Nations need to be consolidated so that the inconsistency and selectivity objections are eradicated.

In August 2017, the Myanmar military initiated what the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights called a text-book example of ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya ethnic minority. In 2020, Myanmar is called to the International Court of Justice to answer to allegations of committed genocide. As the UN has failed to invoke the responsibility to protect, the world has turned to regional organizations as a prevention mechanism in mass atrocity prevention. The research objective of this study is to examine how Myanmar’s regional organization ASEAN has responded to the oppression of the Rohingya minority, as to explain why the atrocities targeting the Rohingya in Myanmar could not be prevented regionally and add to the research on mass atrocity prevention. This thesis is an abductive text analysis with an analytical framework based on Regional Security Complex Theory, which is used to investigate power relations within the region. This thesis argues that the reason the crisis could not be prevented by ASEAN was due to problems on the national, regional, and international levels. Myanmar’s disinterest in human rights, ASEAN’s norm of non-interference, and the international community’s interest in Myanmar’s rich resources all became obstacles in preventing the atrocity from happening. Since genocide prevention has failed several times since the UN’s genocide convention was adopted and entered into force, it is important to add more research to previous work to understand why mass atrocities continue to happen and how we could prevent these atrocities from happening again. The research looks at the Rohingya crisis to draw learnings that can be added to the research on mass atrocity prevention.

Mass humanitarian atrocities – many of them perpetrated by governments against their own people – continue to wreak havoc across Africa. These crises demand decisive action by the African Union (AU), the intergovernmental organisation that presides over peace and security on the continent. Since its formation, the AU has established a set of norms and institutions that reflect the principles of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and by its own declaration, has shifted its approach away from the notion of ‘non-interference’ (as espoused by its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity) to a new position of ‘non-indifference’. However, despite its rhetorical commitment to the implementation of R2P, the AU’s handling of the 2010 Côte d’Ivoire crisis was so weak that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) authorised an intervention led by France. The incapacity of the AU to resolve the conflict raised questions about the organisation’s rhetoric of ‘African solutions to African problems’. This study analyses the AU’s handling of the Côte d’Ivoire crisis, and thereby implicitly investigates the organisation’s challenges in operationalizing the R2P in Africa. The methodology of an extensive literature survey is employed to gather evidence of conceptual and institutional deficiencies within the AU, and possible coordination problems between the AU, ECOWAS and the UNSC in their management of African conflicts. The purpose of the study is thus to contribute to the wider intellectual discourse on R2P operationalization, and specifically aimed at strengthening the AU’s ability to implement its own peace and security agenda. / Mini-dissertation (MSecurity Studies)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / Political Sciences / Unrestricted