A possible essay plan on international intervention for humanitarian purposes

What are the main factors to be weighed by the international community in deciding whether to undertake intervention for humanitarian purposes?

Introduction: Refer to a current UN or EU operation (or operations) undertaken for this purpose and discuss its level of success or failure.

Line of argument: this essay will argue that the Responsibility to Protect doctrine provides a good framework for deciding whether an intervention should be undertaken or not, but only if the conditions it sets out are taken seriously.

Point out that in a humanitarian emergency caused by a natural disaster the state concerned usually requests help so there is no difficulty for the UN in authorizing the emergency aid mission (give an example). When the humanitarian emergency is caused by a civil war the situation may be more difficult because the government of the country concerned may not want international intervention that could 'legitimize' the rebels or because one side or the other has the support of a permanent member of the UNSC which may its veto to block authorization for intervention (give an example, Yemen? Sri Lanka a few years ago? Syria?) and it may be difficult to negotiate a humanitarian corridor.

Move on to peace-keeping/peace-building missions of a more military nature / give a brief history of some of the most important ones and their level of success or failure and reasons for this (going back as far as Somalia and Rwanda in the 1990s.

Explain the Responsibility to Protect doctrine and its 3 pillars. Point out that the ICISS (International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty) argued that any form of military intervention is "an exceptional and extraordinary measure", and, as such, to be justified it must meet certain criteria, including:

• Just cause: There must be "serious and irreparable harm occurring to human beings, or imminently likely to occur".
• Right intention: The main intention of the military action must be to prevent human suffering.
• Last resort: Every other measure besides military invention has to have already been taken into account. (This does not mean that every measurement has to have been applied and been shown to fail, but that there are reasonable grounds to believe that only military action would work in that situation.)
• Proportional means: The military means must not exceed what is necessary "to secure the defined human protection objective".
• Reasonable prospects: The chance of success must be reasonably high, and it must be unlikely that the consequences of the military intervention would be worse than the consequences without the intervention.
• Right authority: The military action has to have been authorized by the Security Council.

Explain with examples (e.g. Libya) how difficult it is to meet these criteria, in particular the condition of reasonable prospects of success. Authorization by by the UN Security Council is both problematic (Syria) and no guarantee of success (Libya), and the international community needs to think very hard about 'reasonable prospects' and the dangers of actually worsening a situation (Libya, Syria, Yemen). Countries willing to intervene may have their own agenda (the wrong intention) or be unwilling to sufficiently commit long-term in the aftermath of the intervention, or simply not take the 'reasonable prospects' condition sufficiently seriously. However, not intervening and watching the human suffering may be equally uncomfortable.

Conclusion: The Responsibility to Protect doctrine is a good framework that may seem simple at first glance but the conditions it sets for intervention are stringent and difficult to meet or feel confident about. At the same time not intervening or only intervening minimally and very late may also be a bad option as the Rwanda case demonstrated. Diplomatic efforts to broker a ceasefire, a cessation of hostilities and negotiations may often seem an inadequate response but may be the best the international community can do. The failure of the international community to either reach a diplomatic agreement or intervene successfully to protect people and prevent human rights violations in both Libya and Syria give little ground for optimism.