HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION: ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST

Nikiforov Ilya Evgenievich

At present, sovereignty is understood as the autonomy of public authorities in internal affairs and independence from other states in the international arena. The preamble of the UN Charter states that relations between states are based on their sovereign equality. In other words, a state refrains from actions that violate the sovereignty of another state. This approach is well-established both in the academic community and in the practical field of international relations, and it seems to be taken for granted. Recently, however, the phenomenon of humanitarian intervention has emerged in political thought and practice, which strongly undermines the concept of national sovereignty. This article shows that humanitarian intervention makes its absolute nature impossible in the modern world and, despite its debatable legitimacy, is justified both from the point of view of international law and morality.

Keywords:principle of non-intervention, principle of non-use of force, humanitarian intervention, human rights