Humanitarian Intervention in Africa: A Case Study of Libya

The following study will investigate the subject of Humanitarian Intervention. It will further explore its application in the Libyan situation of 2011 and consequently it will also analyse the conundrum associated with this intervention. Humanitarian intervention today is as debatable as it was in the early 19th century. The doctrine of Humanitarian intervention therefore, precariously sits in between realism and idealism in the study of international relations. In Africa, traditionally any type of intervention was perceived as being imperialistic in nature however, non-intervention led to serious violations of human rights in the 1970’s and the late 1980’s. The Rwanda genocide of 1994 where the International community failed to intervene to prevent the killing of 800,000 people, led many to rethink the idea of non-intervention. It was with such atrocities that the United Nations (UN) adopted the principle of the Responsibility to protect (RtoP or R2P) and the newly constituted African Union adopted the right to intervene. Despite these noble intentions there are still disagreements on the criteria to determine intervention, who should carry it out and under whose authority? In a world that significantly changed after the September 11, 2001 where global terrorism became a major concern. There is the risk that humanitarian intervention would be easily used to justify illegal wars. This Thesis will therefore attempt to unravel this argument to establish whether humanitarian intervention has become a moral window dressing to ultimately achieve national interests. The study will mainly be a library research and documentary analysis, it will rely on secondary data. It will argue that humanitarian intervention has become a legitimate excuse to accomplish ulterior motives. This Thesis is important and timely in providing policy makers in Africa with mechanisms of identifying and avoiding illegitimate intervention by dominant states in the pretext of addressing Humanitarian concerns.