Human Rights and Military Intervention

This title was first published in 2002. Was the bombing of Belgrade morally justified as an attempt to halt 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo'? Should Western states have tried to prevent the slaughter in Rwanda? Are there, indeed, genuinely universal 'human rights' which could justify such interventions, or is the upholding of such rights simply the imposition of culturally specific values on other cultures? Is national sovereignty a necessary and legitimate impediment to intervention, or are we seeing the emergence of a 'new international order' in which national boundaries are less significant? These and related ethical and political questions are addressed from a wide variety of perspectives by the contributors to this book. The answers presented form important reading for students and researchers in philosophy and in international relations, and for anyone interested in the difficult questions about whether and when other states may intervene in a country's internal affairs in order to uphold human rights.

Contents: Preface; Introduction; Human Rights: Grounding human rights: what difference does it make?, Gideon Calder; Theorising international rights: two perspectives considered, Donald O'Reardon; Universalism and cultural specificity: female circumcision, intrinsic dignity and human rights, Maria Michela Marzano; The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: Violent humanitarianism: an oxymoron?, Nigel Dower; Humanitarian intervention and the logic of war, Paul Robinson; Problems of Selectivity and Consistency: Genocide, consistency and war, Stephen R.L. Clark; Selectivity, imperfect obligations and the character of humanitarian morality, Mark Evans; National Sovereignty and the Legitimacy of Intervention: Humanitarian intervention and international political theory, Chris Brown; On the justifiability of military intervention: the Kosovan case, Brendan Howe; Intervention and collective justice in the post-Westphalian system, Jamie Munn; Repression, secession, and intervention, Paul Gilbert; The New International Order: Global village, global Polis, Iain Brassington; A non-liberal approach to the concept of an 'international order', Philip Ross; Wider Values: Stretching humanitarianisms: cultural and aesthetic values and military intervention, Alexander Moseley and Heather Eisenhut; Index.