The concept of compliance in international law remains amongst the most significant and, at the same time, the most perplexing of questions. The significance of compliance is highlighted in certain spheres of international law that deal with specific extraordinary circumstances. This is particularly true with respect to international humanitarian law, which is applicable during periods of armed conflict. The importance of ensuring and improving compliance with international humanitarian law is clearly expressed in the opening Article of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol I of 1977, in which the High Contracting Parties undertake to both "respect" and "ensure respect" for these instruments. This thesis is derived from a conviction that compliance with international humanitarian norms is more efficiently ensured through implementation, rather than enforcement mechanisms. However, it only ventures a critique of the appropriateness of military intervention as one of the mechanisms most frequently used to enforce humanitarian rules in the past decade of armed conflicts. The hypothesis this thesis postulates is that the recourse to armed force to ensure respect for international humanitarian law is at cross-purposes with the body of these rules. This statement is assessed against the Security Council's military humanitarian intervention in civil conflicts. It is suggested that the validity of the Council's decisions on humanitarian intervention hinges upon two equally determinative criteria: legality and legitimacy. The hypothesis of the thesis questions both the legality and legitimacy of the Security Council's authorized military humanitarian intervention in armed conflicts. The underlying purpose of the thesis is thus to expand the parameters of theoretical discussions about compliance in the context of international humanitarian law from a jurisprudential perspective.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.29572 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Saberi, Hengameh |
| Contributors | Leuprecht, Peter (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Laws (Institute of Comparative Law.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001986391, proquestno: MQ88702, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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