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ABSTRACT
Though increasingly legitimate, humanitarian intervention by the United Nations Security Council is selective and rare. This article illustrates how the increasing legitimacy of human rights norms is changing the meaning of state sovereignty and the purpose of military force at the United Nations. By examining Security Council discourse during debates about Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Darfur, and Libya, the article delineates the conditions under which discourse creates new opportunities for the Security Council to authorize, engage in, and support humanitarian intervention.
I. INTRodUcTIoN
The increasing legitimacy of human rights norms during the 1990s and the end of the Cold War rivalry that divided the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), created the context in which new ideas about the legitimate use of force dramatically altered Security Council practice. Humanitarian intervention was impermissible during the Cold War.2 The Security Council not only failed to stop mass killing, it criticized states that intervened militarily to halt the bloodshed in neighboring states, despite positive humanitarian motives or effects.3
For example, in 1979 in response to Vietnam's military intervention in Cambodia, which effectively halted the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge, France's ambassador to the Council warned that using military force, even against an objectionable regime for humanitarian purposes, was threatening to international order: "The notion that because a régime is detestable foreign intervention is justified and forcible overthrow is legitimate is extremely dangerous. That could ultimately jeopardize the very maintenance of international law and order and make the continued existence of various régimes dependent on the judgement of their neighbours."4 At that time, references to human rights were inappropriate and illegitimate for UNSC deliberation. Discussion of states' human rights practices was considered to infringe on state sovereignty norms, in particular the principle of domestic non-interference protected by Article 2.7 of the UN Charter.
However, in 1999, twenty years after France publicly criticized Vietnam for its illegal intervention, the Security Council declined to formally criticize or censure members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (including France) for its illegal intervention against a rights-abusing regime (to stop Serbian government led ethnic cleansing in Kosovo) precisely because the humanitarian justification made the action legitimate. Then, in 2011 the Security Council engaged in humanitarian intervention to prevent Libyan...