Mourtada Deme - Law, Morality, and International Armed Intervention: The United Nations and ECOWAS

History, Politics, Economics, and Culture

Edited by
Molefi Asante
Temple University

A R OUTLEDGE S ERIES

K WAME N KRUMAHS C ONTRIBUTION TO P AN -A FRICANISM
An Afrocentric Analysis
D. Zizwe Poe

N YANSAPO (T HE W ISDOM K NOT )
Toward an African Philosophy of Education
Kwadwo A. Okrah

T HE A THENS OF W EST A FRICA
A History of International Education at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone
Daniel J. Paracka, Jr.

T HE Y ORB T RADITIONAL H EALERS OF N IGERIA
Mary Olufunmilayo Adekson

T HE C IVIL S OCIETY P ROBLEMATIQUE
Deconstructing Civility and Southern Nigerias Ethnic Radicalization
Adedayo Oluwakayode Adekson

M AAT, THE M ORAL I DEAL IN A NCIENT E GYPT
A Study in Classical African Ethics
Maulana Karenga

I GBO W OMEN AND E CONOMIC T RANSFORMATION IN S OUTHEASTERN N IGERIA , 1900-1960
Gloria Chuku

K WAME N KRUMAHS P OLITICO -C ULTURAL T HOUGHT AND P OLICIES
An African-Centered Paradigm for the Second Phase of the African Revolution
Kwame Botwe-Asamoah

N ON -T RADITIONAL O CCUPATIONS , E MPOWERMENT AND W OMEN
A Case of Togolese Women
Ayl La Adubra

C ONTENDING P OLITICAL P ARADIGMS IN A FRICA
Rationality and the Politics of Democratization in Kenya and Zambia
Shadrack Wanjala Nasongo

L AW , M ORALITY AND I NTERNATIONAL A RMED I NTERVENTION
The United Nations and ECOWAS in Liberia
Mourtada Dme

Published in 2005 by
Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
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Published in Great Britain by
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Taylor & Francis Group
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2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
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International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-97595-6 (Hardcover)
International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-97595-7 (Hardcover)
Library of Congress Card Number 2005014503

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Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data

Dme, Mourtada.

Law, morality and international armed intervention : the United Nations and ECOWAS in Liberia / by Mourtada Dme.

p. cm. -- (African studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-415-97595-6

1. Liberia--History--Civil War, 1989---Participation, Foreign. 2. Liberia--History--Civil War, 1989---Participation, African. 3. United Nations--Liberia. 4. Economic Community of West African States. 5. Africa, West--Politics and government--1960- I. Title. II. African studies (Routledge (Firm))

DT636.5.D46 2005

341.23666209049--dc22

2005014503

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Armed international interventions, justified on humanitarian grounds, have been among the most controversial episodes of world affairs since the end of the Cold War. Why should such interventions be controversial? Are not international humanitarian actions justifiable prima facie? It is because humanitarian grounds for such military actions are not explicitly sanctioned by the United Nations Charter, which privileges the doctrine of nonintervention, the inherent right of self-defense, and the Security Councils responsibility to preserve international peace and security. Various Security Council Resolutions that justify armed international intervention make reference to human rights, but only in the context of efforts to uphold international peace and security. Sovereign states and international organizations have done the same in exercising their right of self-defense. But none of that calls into question, much less does it undermine or change, the fundamental principle of state sovereignty, which has been and continues to be the cornerstone of international law. The constitutive fact that state sovereignty is the essential pillar upon which the architecture of international society is built explains why humanitarian intervention is the most controversial subject in international affairs if it seeks or has the effect of undermining that arrangement. Any contemplated departure and movement away from that fundamental principle is fraught with traps, snares and delusions, as many recent humanitarian interventions in various parts of the world bear witness to.

Mourtada Deme is undoubtedly correct in interpreting UN norms and practice as, on balance, realistic and prudent rather than idealistic and progressive. The fathers of the United Nations who met in San Francisco in 1945, immediately following the most calamitous war in human history which involved unprecedented humanitarian disasters, were determined to endorse the fundamental principles of equal state sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-intervention as the foundation of the new world organization. That was because they were responding to the many acts of armed intervention by Fascist Italy in Ethiopia, by Nazi Germany across Europe, and by Imperialist Japan in Asia and the Pacific which precipitated that war and provoked the allied war effort. All those interventions involved massive human rights violations and some of them acts of forced labor and genocidal murder on an unimaginable scale.