promotion of human rights are drivers

• Humanitarian intervention For

  • Argue that humans rights are drivers as west have intervened in countries where human rights were abused
  • Kosovo intervention - pinnacle of humanitarian intervention - NATO prevented ethnic cleansing of Serbia
  • Blair set principles for state intervention - duty for these nations to act
  • Strengthened by R2P - principle represents the liberal idea that a state's sovereignty is given by the people - social contract - intervention is predominantly led by the US as it rose to a global hegemony
• humanitarian intervention against

  • decline in humanitarian intervention in the past 20 years
  • mainly due to catastrophe of intervention in Afghanistan, Libya and iraq
  • Iraq war has been labelled as the three billion dollar war and is wifely frowned upon by the international community - realist view of self preservation
  • Decline of intervention seen through Obama and americas self interest thus restrained from stepping in - left many as refugees
  • countries only intervene in wars like Ukraine to stop Russian from rising in bipolar power - economic motives dressed up as humaniatarian reasons
• courts and tribunals:

  • Special tribunals were set up ad hoc by the UN to judge the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
  • They were effective method of punishing sever abuses of human rights with ICTY having convicted over 120 individuals
  • ICC was replacing tribunals as a court of last resort when national courts are unwilling or unable to put people on trial
  • ICC - Israel and Hamas arrest warrants
  • these courts and tribunals are dominated by Western opinion, with the ICC investigating Russian action on Ukraine after only 5 days of invasion
• courts and tribunals counter:

  • Courts are very selective
  • only africans have ever been indicted leading the au to discourage participation
  • countless passes on human right violations - Obama used indiscriminate drone strikes during the war on terror
  • Actions undertaken by the west going unnoticed is a clear sign that such international courts and tribunals are a tool of oppression to sustain western dominance
  • Courts and tribunals operate purely to protect human rights is questionable due to the lack of consistency
• sanctions

  • US - Cuba. The US banned businesses from conducting trade with cuban interests, after the cuban government refused to move towards democratisation and a greater respect for human rights
  • Government punishes dissent and public criticisms with beating and surveillance, clearly disrespecting its citizens human rights
  • while trade with Cuba has been beneficial, US saw these tuna right abuses to be more pressing
  • extensive sanctions on iran, despite their oil reserves
  • illustrates that human rights are more important than economic gain , therefore they are primary driver of western states
• sanctions counter:

  • however, this argument is flawed and greatly undermined
  • political motivations for such sanctions
  • many occasions where it seems rational to place sanctions on a country, but this was not done as it was not in the national self interest of western nations
  • Saudi Arabia's bombing in Yemen - mass famine
  • ignored by trump and Biden due to close relations and in fact continued to sell weapons to Saudi, supporting human right violations
  • the selection of sanctions of the west that political concerns are more important than human rights