Human Rights and Humanitarian Intervention: Law and Practice in the Field

2016 | History & Politics

Human rights, peace operations, and humanitarian intervention have emerged in recent decades as important components of international law and practice. Humanitarian intervention is often justified in the name of human rights and the rule of law, but there has been little empirical study of the institutions and individuals conducting the work of human rights and the rule of law in the field. This book offers an important and innovative analysis of law and expertise in humanitarian peace operations. It explores humanitarian intervention through the practices of international human rights experts in UN and other inter-governmental organization (IGO) field missions and the key legal texts that authorize and direct their work. As humanitarian intervention seems increasingly likely to become a permanent fixture of international relations, there is a growing need for critical examination of the practices of intervention and peace operations. This book engages with law, social theory and ethnographic insights to offer a complex and nuanced explanation of humanitarian intervention based upon a multi-dimensional understanding of law and power.

Through a combination of expert interviews and textual sources, the author examines law in its everyday - yet exceptional - context of humanitarian intervention.

Elizabeth M. Bruch (Author)