Humanitarian Intervention And The Responsibility To Protect

The world peace has been destroyed by wars and conflicts, which block the world peace process and bring material loss as well as mental sadness. This thesis will analyze the theory of humanitarian intervention, which is disputable for a long time. It is justified by human rights protection and natural law theory, but it lacks regulations and is inconsistent with UN Charter. On the other hand, human conscience is tortured in the face of the humanitarian disasters. The whole international community, no matter the UN member states or international/regional organizations should be responsible when mass humanitarian crisis occurs. Thus, the thesis will argue the principle and concept of Responsibility to Protect, which is recognized by UN Assembly resolution, point out the differences with traditional humanitarian intervention theory and analyze the implementation of Responsibility to Protect.The first chapter will argue the definition and development of humanitarian intervention, which in this thesis refers to that one or several states intervene one state to address the threat or actual infliction of grave and large-scale violations of fundamental human rights in order to protect people of this state from being deprived of fundamental human rights without UN authorization.The second chapter will argue the dilemma of humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian intervention is justified due to its great respect to human rights. However, in practice, it grants states great discretion and lacks supervision during the military action. Besides, it is inconsistent with State Sovereignty Principle, Principle of Non-interference in each other's internal affairs and Non-force Principle of UN Charter.In the third chapter, the thesis focuses on the rules and developments of Responsibility to Protect. A State has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, which is primary and accepted by most states in 2005 World Summit. But, if the State is unable to protect its population on its own, the international community has a responsibility to assist the state by building its capacity. Then, the thesis analyzes six criteria for military intervention stated in Responsibility to Protect Doctrine. Furthermore, the thesis argues the guideline of implementation of Responsibility to Protect to be in line with the promises made by most states and put forward some proposals.What's more, the thesis argues the legal status of responsibility to protect and Chinese attitude. Responsibility to Protect at present lies in the resolution of the General Assembly and would be an international regulation in future. China, as a responsible great power, should accept the doctrine and promote its development by involving formulating relevant issues.