Why Did Humanitarian Intervention Take Off In The 1990s

Why did the concept and practice of humanitarian intervention take off in the 1990s?

The concept and practice of Humanitarian Intervention (HI) is not a uniquely 20th century idea, with its roots in early 19th century debates over “the issue of interfering in the rights of sovereign states ‘in the cause of humanity’”.1 However, due to the confluence of various political and social developments, the 1990s saw a rapid increase in HI, with the United Nations (UN) becoming involved with 35 different peacekeeping missions during the decade, out of a total of 69 undertaken between the years of 1948 and 2014.2 As shall be shown, there are numerous, often interrelated factors which influenced this increase, including the end of the Cold War (CW) and

This phenomenon in which public reaction to news media influences policy is termed the 'CNN effect'.20 The impact this had on public perceptions of the need for HI is summed up by former US Secretary of State James Baker III, who asserted that "[i]n Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, among others, the real-time coverage of conflict by the electronic media has served to create a powerful new imperative for prompt action that was not present in less frenetic [times]".21 This effect served to reduce complex issues and conflicts to a simple 'bad guys and victims' narrative which, to the viewer, could thus be easily resolved through intervention.22 Also of note in relation to the rising public awareness of humanitarian crises was the huge growth at the time in the amount of NGOs dealing with humanitarian issues, and their exploitation of new media forms such as the internet to disseminate

The creation in 1993 of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the subsequent creation of similar entities in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and East Timor, paved the way for the formation in 1998 of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had “unprecedented powers to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression.”27 The humanitarian crises of the 1990s also triggered debate as to the limits of state sovereignty. Historically, unconditional state sovereignty has been regarded as a crucial element of the international order.28 However, incidents such as the Rwandan genocide led to arguments that state sovereignty need not be absolute, such as Kofi Annan's assertion that the “evolution in our understanding of State sovereignty” represented by HI is “is an evolution that we should welcome”.29 Such a position was further codified by the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which maintains that sovereignty is conditional on a state's willingness or ability to protect its citizens, and which explicitly states in the introduction of its initial report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that it is motivated by the view that “[w]e want no more