THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE LIBYAN CRISIS

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background to the Study Since the end of the cold war, in territories ranging from northern Iraq to East Timor, and from Burma to Syria, a succession of urgent situations involving mass death and suffering of citizens has resulted in external military interventions that were justified on largely humanitarian grounds. There have also been situations in Rwanda and Bosnia, in which there was a strong case for such intervention, but either no action followed or any action taken was too little and too late. With the spate of violence that has pervaded virtually every part and the manner in which strong states have been able to dominate others, and even militarily over-powering them, and bearing in mind that international law desires and states clearly that sovereign states are to be left to their own devices to manage their own affairs independently, the question of intervention and non-intervention becomes very paramount in the quest for scholars to understand the activities of states. Moreover, when we realize that the sovereignty of states in the international system has been more or less overtaken by global interdependence and the emergence of sophisticated information and technological gadgets, we are bound to wonder why states still answer sovereign and independent entities. Over the last decade, a lot of worrying things have happened which decided the actions of responsible governments. Especially of note is the issue of intervening in the internal affairs of independent and sovereign states. Some of the recent examples of total indifference to the plight of people that come to mind readily are the Somalia 1991/92 conflict, the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the Bosnia massacre of 1995 and the Kosovo crisis of 1999. The blasé attitude shown by the militarily powerful when these gruesome activities were going on in these four places have provoked a lot of debate on the responsibility of the international community towards the carnages that go on daily in the world generally, and Africa in particular. It was consequent upon this that the Canadian government in September 2000, with the