Humanitarian Intervention in Ethnic Conflict in light of Kosovo

Abstract

Humanitarian intervention has always been one of the most controversial issues in the international relations community. One of the reasons for being so controversial is because of difficulty in judging a state’s true motivation to intervene. Third party involvement in internal ethnic conflict has generated much interest especially in post Cold War period. They became the interveners of intra-state conflict disputes in order to minimize the potentials for human rights abuses, instability and violence. However looking back at the inconsistency of the action from the third parties by intervening in one area but not in another one, put into doubts the “pure” nature of humanitarian intervention. A close look to conceptual and empirical level of humanitarian intervention in ethnic conflict helps to understand better the real motivations that drive the third parties to intervene in order to give an end to the internal disputes.\r\n This thesis suggests that realist-liberalist perspectives are the best paradigms which can explain the controversial aspect of the humanitarian intervention. The detailed analyses of the case study of Kosovo and the comparison with the ethnic conflict in Rwanda has illustrated that there doesn’t exist such a concept as “pure humanitarian intervention” but a mixture of motivations and aims are involved in these humanitarian emergencies.