Humanitarian Protection in Libya

4222 Words17 Pages
INTRODUCTION The United Nation’s unprecedented authorisation of the use of military force to protect the Libyan civilians from the tyranny of Dictator Muammar Qaddafi was agreed to for a combination of humanitarian as well as political impulses. The crackdown by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi on mass anti-regime protests in early 2011 resulted in strong condemnation by the international community. In a historic move, the UN Security Council invoked the principle of "responsibility to protect" and adopted UN Resolution 1973, endorsing a no-fly zone over Libya and authorizing member states to "take all necessary measures" to protect civilians under attack from Qaddafi's government. As a result, some Western countries, including the United States, began air strikes over Libya and the conflict that followed resulted in a regime change in Libya and inevitably killing of Qaddafi. But did the ‘Humanitarian intervention’ meet all the necessary aspects of the principle of ‘responsibility to protect’ based on which it was launched? Can the use of enforcement through coercive tactics which are essentially ‘military’ justify humanitarian intervention? This paper tries to answer the above questions by analysing R2P doctrine, various aspects of humanitarian intervention and examines whether the entire Libyan experience strengthen or weaken the case for preventive humanitarian intervention in future. Intervention by states in the territory of a sovereign state is generally proscribed in international law by the doctrine of non-intervention. Intervention has been defined as “a coercive tactic used to manipulate a country into taking a certain path that would not otherwise be chosen”, and “consists of military involvement or the encouragement of the use of force by an outside power in a domestic conflict”. Although intervention in the affairs of states is normally forbidden
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