Pre-empting humanitarian interventions

Thomas Pogge

pp. 153-170

in: Ian Carter, Mario Ricciardi (eds), Freedom, power and political morality, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Abstract

Let me define humanitarian intervention, roughly, as coercive external interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state justified by the goal of protecting large numbers of persons within this state in the enjoyment of their human rights. In most cases, the massive human rights problems that provide reasons for humanitarian interventions are due to those who hold, or try to gain, power in the foreign state in question. What follows will implicitly have this central case in mind, though I recognize that there are other cases, such as natural calamities or the collapse of governmental authority.