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International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa
2015
Since the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations, genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes-mass atrocities-have been explicitly illegal. When such crimes are committed, the international community has an obligation to respond: the human rights of the victims outweigh the sovereignty claims of states that engage in or allow such human rights violations. This obligation has come to be known as the responsibility to protect. Yet, parallel to this responsibility, two other related responsibilities have developed: to prosecute those responsible for the crimes, and to provide humanitarian relief to the victims-what the author calls the responsibility to palliate. Even though this rhetoric of protecting those in need is well used by the international community, its application in practice has been erratic at best.
InInternational Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa, Kurt Mills develops a typology of responses to mass atrocities, investigates the limitations of these responses, and calls for such responses to be implemented in a more timely and thoughtful manner. Mills considers four cases of international responses to mass atrocities-in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Darfur-putting the cases into historical context and analyzing them according to the typology, showing how the responses interact. Although all are intended to address human suffering, they are very different types of actions and accomplish different things, over different timescales, on different orders of magnitude, and by very different types of actors. But the critical question is whether they accomplish their objectives in a mutually supportive way-and what the trade-offs in using one or more of these responses may be. By expanding the understanding of international responsibilities, Mills provides critical analysis of the possibilities for the international community to respond to humanitarian crises.
Divided sovereignty : international institutions and the limits of state authority
The question of how to constrain states that commit severe abuses against their own citizens is as persistent as it is vexing. States are imperfect political forms that in theory possess both a monopoly on coercive power and final jurisdictional authority over their territory. These twin elements of sovereignty and authority can be used by state leaders and political representatives in ways that stray significantly from the interests of citizens. In the most extreme cases, when citizens become inconvenient obstacles in the pursuit of the self-serving ambitions of their leaders, state power turns against them. Genocide, torture, displacement, and rape are often the means of choice by which the inconvenient are made to suffer or vanish. In Divided Sovereignty, Carmen Pavel explores new institutional solutions to this abiding problem. She argues that coercive international institutions can stop these abuses and act as an insurance scheme against the possibility of states failing to fulfill their most basic sovereign responsibilities. She thus challenges the longstanding assumption that collective grants of authority from the citizens of a state should be made exclusively for institutions within the borders of that state. Despite worries that international institutions such as the International Criminal Court could undermine domestic democratic control, citizens can divide sovereign authority between state and international institutions consistent with their right of democratic self-governance. Pavel defends universal, principled limits on state authority based on jus cogens norms, a special category of norms in international law that prohibit violations of basic human rights. Against skeptics, she argues that many of the challenges of building an additional layer of institutions can be met if we pay attention to the conditions of institutional success, which require experimentation with different institutional forms, limitations on the scope of authority for coercive international institutions, and an appreciation of the limits of existing knowledge on institutional design.-- Provided by Publisher.
Humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect : who should intervene?
This book considers who should undertake humanitarian intervention in response to an ongoing or impending humanitarian crisis, such as found in Rwanda in early 1994, Kosovo in 1999, and Darfur more recently. The doctrine of the responsibility to protect asserts that when a state is failing to uphold its citizens' human rights, the international community has a responsibility to protect these citizens, including by undertaking humanitarian intervention. It is unclear, however, which particular agent should be tasked with this responsibility. Should we prefer intervention by the UN, NATO, a regional or subregional organization (such as the African Union), a state, a group of states, or someone else? This book answers this question by, first, determining which qualities of interveners are morally significant and, second, assessing the relative importance of these qualities. For instance, is it important that an intervener have a humanitarian motive? Should an intervener be welcomed by those it is trying to save? How important is it that an intervener will be effective and what does this mean in practice? The book then considers the more empirical question of whether (and to what extent) the current interveners actually possess these qualities, and therefore should intervene. For instance, how effective can we expect UN action to be in the future? Is NATO likely to use humanitarian means? Overall, it develops a particular normative conception of legitimacy for humanitarian intervention. It uses this conception of legitimacy to assess not only current interveners, but also the desirability of potential reforms to the mechanisms and agents of humanitarian intervention.
Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms, Strategic Framing, and Intervention
2013,2012
The human rights and humanitarian landscape of the modern era has been littered with acts that have shocked the moral conscience of mankind, and there has been wide variation in whether, how, and to what degree states respond to mass atrocity crimes, even when they share similar characteristics. In many cases concerned states responded, either through moral suasion; gentle or coercive diplomacy; or other non-forcible measures, to prevent or halt the indiscriminate human rights violations that were occurring. In others, states simply turned away and left the vulnerable to their fate. And still yet in other cases, states responded robustly, using military force to stop the atrocities and save lives.
This book seeks to examine the effects of strategic framing in U.S. and UN policy arenas to draw conclusions regarding whether and how the human rights and humanitarian norms embedded within such frames resonated with decision-makers and, in turn, how they shaped variation in levels of political will concerning humanitarian intervention in three cases that today would qualify as Responsibility to Protect (R2P) cases: Somalia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. Labonte concludes that in order for humanitarian interventions to stand a higher likelihood of being effective, states advocating in support of such actions must find a way to persuade policymakers by appealing to both the logic of consequences (which rely on material and pragmatic considerations) and logic of appropriateness (which rely on normatively appropriate considerations) - and strategic framing may be one path to achieve this outcome.
Offering a detailed and examination of three key cases and providing some an original and important contribution to the field this work will be of great interest to students and scholars alike.
Killing with Kindness
2012
After Haiti's 2010 earthquake, over half of U.S. households donated to thousands of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in that country. Yet we continue to hear stories of misery from Haiti. Why have NGOs failed at their mission?Set in Haiti during the 2004 coup and aftermath and enhanced by research conducted after the 2010 earthquake,Killing with Kindnessanalyzes the impact of official development aid on recipient NGOs and their relationships with local communities. Written like a detective story, the book offers rich enthnographic comparisons of two Haitian women's NGOs working in HIV/AIDS prevention, one with public funding (including USAID), the other with private European NGO partners. Mark Schuller looks at participation and autonomy, analyzing donor policies that inhibit these goals. He focuses on NGOs' roles as intermediaries in \"gluing\" the contemporary world system together and shows how power works within the aid system as these intermediaries impose interpretations of unclear mandates down the chain-a process Schuller calls \"trickle-down imperialism.\"
The dark sides of virtue
2008,2011,2005
In this provocative and timely book, David Kennedy explores what can go awry when we put our humanitarian yearnings into action on a global scale--and what we can do in response.
Rooted in Kennedy's own experience in numerous humanitarian efforts, the book examines campaigns for human rights, refugee protection, economic development, and for humanitarian limits to the conduct of war. It takes us from the jails of Uruguay to the corridors of the United Nations, from the founding of a non-governmental organization dedicated to the liberation of East Timor to work aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
Kennedy shares the satisfactions of international humanitarian engagement--but also the disappointments of a faith betrayed. With humanitarianism's new power comes knowledge that even the most well-intentioned projects can create as many problems as they solve. Kennedy develops a checklist of the unforeseen consequences, blind spots, and biases of humanitarian work--from focusing too much on rules and too little on results to the ambiguities of waging war in the name of human rights. He explores the mix of altruism, self-doubt, self-congratulation, and simple disorientation that accompany efforts to bring humanitarian commitments to foreign settings.
Writing for all those who wish that \"globalization\" could be more humane, Kennedy urges us to think and work more pragmatically.
A work of unusual verve, honesty, and insight, this insider's account urges us to embrace the freedom and the responsibility that come with a deeper awareness of the dark sides of humanitarian governance.