Humanitarian Intervention - Case Study Example

Humanitarian Intervention Student’s Name Conflict resolution Professor University/Institution Location Date Introduction Although the end of cold war in the 1990s cooled down the danger of World War, it failed to address the need to end armed conflicts together with existing humanitarian catastrophes worldwide. Humanitarian intervention in cases of war and conflicts are mainly initiated by international organizations and agencies like United Nations, and nongovernment organizations. Generally, in a situation of war and disaster, this kind of intervention in various capacity have saved hundreds of lives through the provision of food, medical supplies and even intervening in the war in extreme cases. Most international communities' appreciate the value of this kind of efforts by humanitarian organizations but in recent time critics have asserted on the potential of these humanitarian activists to exacerbate conflicts instead of promoting peace in the course of their intervention. Most of these critics have assessed the extent of negative externalities caused by these interventions. Following the end of the cold war was the series of civil war in Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, which broke out in 1991. In 1994 Rwanda crisis started followed by the ongoing civil war in Syria and Central Africa Republic and all these wars have increased the number of civilian casualties while still heightened the rise in demand for the need of humanitarian intervention. Faced with this increase in a catastrophic problem, the international community is confronted on the best way to deal with the humanitarian crisis in the best approach. Particularly the underlying purpose for the establishment of humanitarian intervention is to bring an end to human suffering resulting from crises and uphold human rights by protecting, restoring peace and enhancing security (Benjamin, 1992). Considering past initiated humanitarian interventions, some have being successful while many examples have failed in meeting this goal. The legitimacy to initiating humanitarian intervention and achieving overall humanitarian goal is not well established. Specifically, international communities are required to develop the best approach to use in its effort when initiating effective humanitarian intervention based on international laws. The purpose of this essay is to explore the role of humanitarian intervention with a focus to determine the reason why most intervention does not bare result in ending conflicts. Particularly this paper achieves this by analyzing different case studies where international community humanitarian intervention did not result in establishing expected conflict resolution while still looking at other cases where humanitarian intervention offered solution by ending the conflict. Looking at case study of Libya NATO humanitarian intervention of 2011 with an intention of examining the reasons and conditions under which international humanitarian communities played role in resolving this conflict is significant. In analyzing the case study of Libya experience with NATO humanitarian intervention, first, there is the importance of asserting that although activities by humanitarian agencies do not generate conflicts, most of them attribute to and reinforce violently (Kaldor, 2001). In addressing the incapacity of humanitarian intervention to resolve conflict and their possible negative impacts, it is significant to look at this two issues; first is the transfer of resources and second involves ethical messages conveyed through the provision of assistance. Humanitarian body's objectives in peace restoration and protecting humanitarian may be crippled when they incline with one side of the warring force. The results of this inclination with one side result in allowing it to gain control of the supplies provided targeting humanitarian assistance mission either through stealing or by imposing levies. Also, the primary strategies by most humanitarian bodies involve the provision of needs to the civil populations, and this makes the warring force especially the ruling regime to direct government resources and use it for war preparation intensifying their capability to pose threat and violence. Humanitarian bodies can intensify intergroup tensions by providing external resources with the discriminatory approach as this creates imbalance among external and existing resources. Furthermore humanitarian bodies can fail in achieving their objective in peace building if they have more funds than those of the involved government where intervention for peace building is been targeted posing a challenge to the achievement of humanitarian objectives. When negotiating with diverse parties in war in order for humanitarian agencies to get access to civilians behind their lines of control contributes to incapacity for these agencies to achieve towards conflict resolution. In various cases, humanitarian agencies have been noted to express solidarity with diverse groups engaged in war against dictatorial regimes and in most cases this results in war reinforcement. Overreliance by humanitarian agency on military forces when delivering their humanitarian supplies raises question on their specific nature as most of them end up adapting military logistic systems. Generally, this undermines the civilian control as it ignores the role of local capacity in carrying out locally initiated peace building agenda which adversely slows peace building mechanism. Diverse commentators have appeared to hold praise of NATO'S 2011 intervention role in Libya as a humanitarian action which achieved in averting conflict and bloodbath across Benghazi city. Specifically, majority of people view that humanitarian intervention in this particular country served in eliminating dictatorial regime that had lasted almost 40 years. According to these proponents, they hold that NATO intervention, in this case, was a clear demonstration of how humanitarian implementation based on the responsibility to protect should be successfully implemented(Gardiner, 2007). In the particular majority of representatives of United States to the transatlantic alliance proclaimed that NATO's operation during this crisis was an indication of how intervention model should be designed. In contrast to this, looking at NATO humanitarian intervention from a more detailed and rigorous analysis the need for this intervention remains questionable. First, though Western media report held that Qaddafi had initiated the Libya violence through targeting peaceful protesters, reports from United Nations and Amnesty International documented that civil conflicts Libya cities were initiated by protesters (Kuperman, 2013). Further reports documented in contrary to Western media perspective disclosed that the government response was targeting rebels and was not intentionally directed at civilians and was not indiscriminative either. Also to international intervention, the press exaggerated death toll by a factor of ten indicating more than 2,000 deaths while on the other hand human rights watch had only documented 233 deaths all over Libya at that particular time. More evidence accounting on this civil war exposed that of a total number of wounded individuals within the initial rebellion week the number of children and women was thirty. Generally, this is a clear indication that Qaddafi's force main focus was on the combatants as further report indicated that only 257 people had been killed among the total city population of 40,000; additionally, this further proved of Qaddafi's government avoidance to using force indiscriminately (Hofmann, and Schneckener, 2011). More over analysis of the four cities Libya government had achieved in liberating from libels, there lacked evidence to use of bloodbath, and therefore, there was no risk of that kind of outcome if the government was allowed to recapture the only remaining rebel stronghold city of Benghazi. More importantly to note is that the conventional wisdom was wrong in asserting that NATO's main objective in Libya was aimed at protecting civilians. Evidence supported the belief that NATO primary agenda was overthrowing Qaddafi regime at all cost even if it called to increasing harm to Libyans. Besides more reports indicated that NATO attack on Libyan force was discriminative as they attacked even those on retreat and even those found in Qaddafi's hometown of Sirte even though they did not pose any threat to civilians. Further to note is how NATO continued to offer aid to rebels even when though they rejected government ceases-fire offers which could have ended the violence sparing civilians (Pirseyedi, 2000). There exist clear evidence that through international community intervention, the rebels were assisted on weapon training, covert deployment of troops from Asian specifically Qatar and eventually this enabled them in capturing and executing Qaddafi and their eventual seize of power in 2011. Through critical analysis of this case in regard to NATO humanitarian intervention aiming at conflict resolution, there exist a misconception in that it saved lives with benefits to Libya and its neighbors. Contrary to this, even before NATO intervened Qaddafi had already regained control to most of the Libya and the rebels were already retreating toward Egypt. Specifically, this was a conviction that Libya's government was succeeding in containing the conflict even before any humanitarian intervention. moreover, the conflict was ending barely six weeks after its emergency with a death toll of approximately 1,000 among this number were soldiers, rebels, and civilians. It was only after the humanitarian intervention through NATO that ignited the over ending conflict again by enabling rebels to resume their attacks prolonging the war and further increasing death tolls. It is this observation that the role of humanitarian intervention in conflict resolution remains questionable. The function of humanitarian intervention in saving lives and establishing peace by offering a solution to conflict needed to be reestablished if the true meaning of what it asserts is to be evidenced. Using the role of NATO intervention in Libya conflict resolution this model intervention is debatable as it increased the civil war to almost six times, increased death toll and exacerbating human right abuses with increased human suffering characterized with Islamic radicalization together with weapon proliferation in Libya and the neighboring countries. Precisely if this is the model of humanitarian intervention, then it is indicative of failure and its unreliability in ending the conflict. Generally with humanitarian intervention aimed at ending conflict in Libya, the expected outcomes should be long lasting for the mission to be termed as successful and hence promoted to be as a base to conflict resolution. With the observed outcomes after NATO intervention in Libya, its humanitarian role is doubtable. From a general view, NATO failed in establishing lasting solution to this conflict considering the post-war nature of Libya which is discouraging. Even after Qaddafi was executed, the victorious rebels further perpetrated scores with reprisal killings while still expelling 30,000 blacks arguing that they were mercenaries used by Qaddafi government. In this regard with humanitarian intervention in place, this kind of abuses should not have occurred as they amount to crimes against humanity that NATO claimed to protect. It is ironical that instead of humanitarian intervention through NATO in Libya to result in established peace and end to human suffering it resulted to worsened ethnic-based violence which was experienced in post-war Libya. Besides, the emergency of radical Islamic groups that were previously suppressed during Qaddafi regime as fiercest rebels during the war; incapacity of humanitarian intervention to disarm them further heightens the questioning of humanitarian body's ability to resolve conflict by establishing peace building and reconciliation strategies (Tschirgi, 2004). The attack on United States facilities which achieved in killing the ambassador and subsequent bombing and destruction of half of the French embassy is an indication that humanitarian intervention cannot offer a solution to conflicts entirely, and they have their shortcoming. It was expected that humanitarian intervention to conflicts in Libya would result in observed peace trickling to neighboring countries, and this was not the case with Mali suffering the worst consequences of this intervention. NATO as humanitarian intervention body failure in establishing measures that would have resolved the outcomes of the defeat of Qaddafi contributed to Tuareg soldiers of Mali descent launching a rebellion in the north of Mali. Eventually, this led to the declaration of entire northern Mali as an independent country comprising of the largest territory under the control of Islamic extremist worldwide. With a subsequent displacement of massive Malian civilians, the failure of humanitarian intervention through NATO to bring to an end completely of a conflict is evident posing weakness in overall role of such humanitarian bodies in the face of conflict. Failure of NATO in playing its role in overall conflict resolution to account for the leakage of sophisticated weapons from Qaddafi government to Islamist throughout the region further questions the confidence in humanitarian bodies capacity in conflict resolution. Furthermore humanitarian intervention with its discriminatory objectives has acted to strengthen rebellion in other countries as most of these bodies tend to support the protesters (Kuperman, 2008). Specifically, this is critical given that humanitarian intervention by NATO in Libya functioned to encourage Syria formerly peaceful protesters to using violence with hope to attract similar response from NATO. Precisely this has resulted in more killings in Syria which have increased by tenfold, challenging the innocent nature of the humanitarian intervention and their role in conflict resolution. Specifically humanitarian intervention role can be viewed as a stimulant to more conflict elsewhere with the focus of involved parties based on attracting intervention from this kind of bodies. Although NATO intervention in Libya conflicts failed, at least other humanitarian intervention agencies can learn various lessons when implementing their responsibility to protect human rights. Humanitarian intervention in case of conflicts should be based on an understanding of the misinformation as well as propaganda from rebels. Importantly if international communities involved had accurately analyzed Libya's origin of its civil conflict and other conflicts of similar nature, then their humanitarian intervention could have had much influence with the ability to have a counterproductive intervention. Besides humanitarian intervention need to establish a mechanism for mitigating conflicts through avoidance of intervening with humanitarian grounds that seems rewarding to rebels but should be neutral utilizing unbiased techniques (Holzgrefe and Keohane, 2003). With this kind of approach, humanitarian bodies will be able to discourage some substrate groups which use the mechanism of provoking state using violent in their agenda of achieving political goals like regime change. Most of these violent and escalation usually magnifies threat to civilians even before any humanitarian intervention acts. In this regard for humanitarian intervention to successfully intervene in the conflict, it should base its prospect on moral dynamics aimed at only protecting civilians while taking no discriminatory role. Furthermore, for humanitarian intervention to have future impact on long run conflict resolution there is need for them to take considerable caution with a comprehensive examination of alternatives when deciding on the best approach to conducting their intervention. Mainly this is significant considering that intervention motivated by a desire to protect civilians can be prone to include other objectives like a change in regime which has diverse effects in magnifying danger posed to civilians. Basically with the majority of humanitarian intervention justifying their use of force when carrying their intervention based on demonizing the regime in the governance of the target country (Holbrook, 2002). Such approach by most humanitarian bodies when carrying out their intervention roles has an influence as it inhibits interveners from settling peace in a negotiated form which would be the easiest way to ending violence while still protecting noncombatants. Conclusion Though faced with criticism, humanitarian intervention can have an impact in establishing solutions to conflicts. In an effort to reduce current negative externalities people have towards humanitarian efforts with a lack of trust in its capacity to bear solution in the face of conflicts, planning on the part of these agencies is important. International communities need to assemble capable and well prepared in an advance team that will be ready for deployment in case of future emergency. To facilitate planning, humanitarian agencies should employ experts from those target countries in crisis either on short term or long term basis to offer training and advice on the best approach to minimize negative effects of humanitarian assistance. In this view, humanitarian agencies should involve sociological and ethnological experts within their agencies to help in developing appropriate population profiles well in advance of the possible emergency eruption (Smock, 1996). Preplanning on the part of humanitarian agencies combined with risk mapping can increase response and reliability altitude people have toward intervention agencies altogether. Human right monitoring, human right capacity building combined with advocacy for human rights should be the central goal of humanitarian agencies if they are to gain public confidence in their capability in conflict resolution. International communities should permit humanitarian agencies mandate allowing them to aggressively and publicly speak out against human right violation. Humanitarian agencies should coordinate closely with other related agencies putting their interest apart in their action toward conflict resolutions as this will promote confidence people have towards their capacity in peace building and protecting human right violations. Peace building should be the main aim of humanitarian assistance and should aim at promoting peace through promoting participatory dialogue as a step toward conflict resolution (Tocci, 2007). Generally, humanitarian intervention in conflict situations should play a role in building bridges among communities and regimes in critical violence. Humanitarian agencies should embrace peace building by strengthening civil societies and establishing the rule of law together with responsible governance as an approach to conflict resolution. Furthermore, the overall importance of humanitarian intervention in cases of conflict resolution should not be based on the international community's geo-strategic interest, and influence of given intervention has in their politics but should rather be based on the purpose to promote peace and human rights. Considering the self-interest most of the international communities have when supporting humanitarian intervention at a given instance is a contributing factor to existing notion people have towards humanitarian intervention incapacity to ending conflicts. In most cases the driving force towards engaging in humanitarian conflict resolution has been driven by special interest, the involved nations offering humanitarian aid have in given conflicting nations. Specifically this makes reliability on humanitarian intervention as a cure to conflict unreliable. References Benjamin, B.M., 1992. Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention: Legalizing the Use of Force to Prevent Human Rights Atrocities. Fordham Int'l LJ, 16, p.120. Gardiner, N., 2007. The Decline and Fall of the United Nations: Why the UN Has Failed and How It Can Be Reformed. Heritage Foundation. Hofmann, C. and Schneckener, U., 2011. Engaging non-state armed actors in state-and peace-building: options and strategies. 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