Alternative agents for humanitarian intervention

The use of private security companies by national governments is met with widespread skepticism. Less understood is the role these companies can play in international humanitarian interventions in the service of international organizations. I argue here that despite valid concerns about the use of such private entities, we should nonetheless see them as legitimate participants in efforts to secure human rights protection around the globe. In order to assess their legitimacy, we need to ensure, among other things, that they can adhere to ethical standards when serving in humanitarian missions, that they can be held accountable when they fail to uphold the standard of justice enshrined in international law, and that their for-profit status does not have implications detrimental to humanitarian concerns.     

Is U.N. Security Council Authorisation for Armed Humanitarian Intervention Morally Necessary?

Relative to the abundance of literature devoted to the legal significance of UN authorisation, little has been written about whether the UN’s failure to sanction an intervention can ever make it immoral. This is the question that I take up here. I argue that UN authorisation (or lack thereof) can have some indirect bearing on the moral status of a humanitarian intervention. That is, it can affect whether an intervention satisfies other widely accepted justifying conditions, such as proportionality, “internal” legitimacy, and likelihood of success. The more interesting question, however, is whether the UN’s failure to provide a mandate can make a humanitarian operation unjust independently of these other familiar considerations. Is a proportional, internally legitimate humanitarian intervention, with a just cause and strong prospect of success, still morally unacceptable if it is not approved by the United Nations Security Council? This is the question that I turn to in the second half of the paper.     

Humanitarian intervention and historical responsibility

Some suggest that the duty of humanitarian intervention should be discharged by states that are historically responsible for the occurrence of violence. A fundamental problem with this suggestion is that historically responsible states might be ill-suited to intervene because they are unlikely to enjoy support from the local population. Cécile Fabre has suggested a way around that problem, arguing that responsible states ought to pay for humanitarian interventions even though they ought not to take part in the military operations. We claim that Fabre’s idea is subject to two concerns. First, the duty to perform might not be appropriately transferrable from the historically responsible state to another state because it would allow the primary duty bearer to escape the worst costs of intervention. Second, an intervention might be as unlikely to generate local support when a historically responsible state pays for an intervention as when it performs it. These problems are enough to cast doubt on Fabre’s idea. However, the idea is helpful because it highlights as yet neglected questions about how the financial and material burden of humanitarian intervention is to be shared.     

Are Humanitarian Military Interventions Obligatory?

I argue here that certain species of war, namely humanitarian military interventions (HMIs), can be obligatory within particular contexts. Specifically, I look at the notion of HMIs through the lens of just war theory and argue that when a minimal account of jus ad bellum implies that an intervention is permissible, it also implies that it is obligatory. I begin by clarifying the jus ad bellum conditions (such as just cause, right intentions, etc.) under which an intervention is permissible. I then turn to the claim that permissibility necessitates obligation, by first showing that whenever an intervention is permissible, it is also minimally decent. Second, I show that minimally decent actions are morally obligatory by arguing that the notion of minimal decency is a conceptual bridge between negative and positive duties. Third, I argue that performing minimally decent actions is necessary for a state to be just. Ultimately, my conclusion arises from the following observation: if a humanitarian crisis is bad enough for one to hold that it is permissible to breach sovereignty of a nation, then it is bad enough to hold that there is an obligation to intervene.     

The Case for Markets in Citizenship

A number of countries sell citizenship rights to foreign buyers. Gary Becker makes an economic case for the state's sale of citizenship; more recently, Javier Hidalgo has offered a moral defence. However, the private sale of citizenship on a market remains largely unexplored and undefended. This article argues that under certain conditions states ought to permit their citizens to swap citizenship rights with foreigners in exchange for payment. I begin by offering two defeasible reasons to legalize citizenship markets: they would enable mutually beneficial exchange and increase the labour market opportunities of the global poor. I consider a number of counterarguments and conclude that none are dispositive, leaving the case for citizenship markets undefeated.     

Iris Marion Young on responsible intervention: reimagining humanitarian intervention

Iris Marion Young took a strong stance against humanitarian intervention and other so-called legitimate instances of what she calls ‘official violence’. Nevertheless, she was also aware that there may be some situations for which military humanitarian intervention should at least be considered. Young was concerned that some states will use their obligation to defend against human rights violations as a mechanism in securing or maintaining global dominance. In addition, she recognized that what counts as a violation of human rights is not uncontroversial; human rights norms and conventions are interpreted, negotiated, and otherwise contested. In this article, I build on Young’s arguments for a social connection model of responsibility by applying it to a situation where a forceful response to violence might be justified. I juxtapose Young’s position with the emerging international standard called ‘the responsibility to protect’ in order to suggest an account of intervention for global governance relations.     

The politics of humanitarian intervention: a critical analogy of the British response to end the slave trade and the civil war in Sierra Leone

A leading scholar of humanitarian intervention, Brown (2002) Brown, C. 2002. “Humanitarian intervention and international political theory”. In Human rights and military intervention, Edited by: Mosley, A. and Norman, R. 153–69. Aldershot: Ashgale Publishing.  [Google Scholar] refers to British internal politics to satisfy the influential church and other non-conformist libertarian community leaders, and above all ‘undermining Britain's competitors, such as Spain and Portugal, who were still reliant on slave labour to power their economies, as the principal motivation for calls to end the slave trade than any genuine humanitarian concerns of racial equality or global justice’. Drawing on an empirical exploration, this article seeks to draw a parallel between this politics of humanitarian intervention which characterised the abolition movement, albeit rarely recognised in the academic literature, and the British intervention to end the almost 11 year civil war in Sierra Leone. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of this politics of humanitarian intervention in the reconstruction of post-conflict Sierra Leone.     

Selective humanitarian intervention: moral reason and collective agents

This paper examines four interpretations of the observation that humanitarian intervention might be used ‘selectively’ or ‘inconsistently’ in order to elucidate the normative commitments of the deliberative process in international relations. The paper argues that there are several types of concerns that are implicit in the accusation of inconsistency, and only some of them amount to objections to humanitarian intervention as a whole. The paradox of humanitarian intervention is that intervention is prohibited except where the intervention is humanitarian, yet humanitarian reasons never exist in isolation, and it is nearly impossible to determine the real reason for intervention (or any other collective action) in the international arena. The problems revealed by an examination of inconsistency in the example of humanitarian intervention turn out to be general problems with applying the norms of practical reasoning to moral questions dealing with collective agents.     

Breaching Confidentiality to Protect the Public: Evolving Standards of Medical Confidentiality for Military Detainees

Confidentiality is a core value in medicine and public health yet, like other core values, it is not absolute. Medical ethics has typically allowed for breaches of confidentiality when there is a credible threat of significant harm to an identifiable third party. Medical ethics has been less explicit in spelling out criteria for allowing breaches of confidentiality to protect populations, instead tending to defer these decisions to the law. But recently, issues in military detention settings have raised the profile of decisions to breach medical confidentiality in efforts to protect the broader population. National and international ethics documents say little about the confidentiality of detainee medical records. But initial decisions to use detainee medical records to help craft coercive interrogations led to widespread condemnation, and might have contributed to detainee health problems, such as a large number of suicide attempts several of which have been successful. More recent military guidance seems to reflect lessons learned from these problems and does more to protect detainee records. For the public health system, this experience is a reminder of the importance of confidentiality in creating trustworthy, and effective, means to protect the public's health.     

‘Humane intervention’: the international protection of animal rights

This paper explores the international implications of liberal theories which extend justice to sentient animals. In particular, it asks whether they imply that coercive military intervention in a state by external agents to prevent, halt or minimise violations of basic animal rights (‘humane intervention’) can be justified. In so doing, it employs Simon Caney's theory of humanitarian intervention and applies it to non-human animals. It argues that while humane intervention can be justified in principle using Caney's assumptions, justifying any particular intervention on behalf of animals is much more difficult – and in present circumstances impossible. If these claims are correct, a number of important conclusions follow. First, all states lack legitimacy because of the horrors that they inflict upon animals. As a result of this, all states are prima facie liable to intervention by external agents. To remedy this situation, all states have the responsibility to massively transform their relationship with non-human animals, and to build international institutions to oversee the proper protection of their most basic rights.     

Can the doctrine of just military intervention survive Iraq?

The disastrous consequences of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 appear to discredit just war theories that justify military intervention in sovereign states in the name of human rights. It is possible, however, to identify factors that distinguish a defensible military intervention from the kind pursued in Iraq, and to incorporate these into a doctrine of humanitarian military intervention that would not have permitted the Iraq invasion. This improved doctrine stands in contrast to the militant interventionist doctrine that endorsed the invasion – a variant referred to here as the doctrine of just anti-totalitarian war (JAW). In order to critique the JAW doctrine and distinguish it from the improved doctrine, I examine critically the JAW-supporters' attempt to make sense of what went wrong in Iraq, and propose an alternative diagnosis. It is this alternative diagnosis that grounds a defense of moderate versions of the doctrine of just military intervention, which I seek in turn to render ‘Iraq-proof’. My Iraq-proof refinement is expressed in a list of injunctions. These require, among other things, critical interrogation of the moral standing of intervening powers and greater attention to the legitimate grievances of adversaries in regions targeted for intervention. They would also permit military intervention only in moral emergencies, and usually only to establish safe havens and protect relief supplies.     

Cross-border feminism: shifting the terms of debate for US and European feminists

Recent decades of women's rights advocacy have produced numerous regional and international agreements for protecting women's security, including a UN convention that affirms the state's responsibility to protect key gender-specific rights, with no exceptions on the basis of culture or religion. At the same time, however, the focus on universal women's rights has enabled influential feminists in the United States to view women's rights in opposition to culture, and most often in opposition to other people's cultures. Not surprisingly, then, feminists across the global South have criticized the universal-women's-rights agenda. This article reviews representative critical responses to universal-women's-rights advocacy. The author argues that, taken collectively, these critical responses do not reject the possibility of cross-cultural feminist advocacy but they do suggest the need for feminists in the United States and Europe to focus less on transferring rights across the obstacles of culture and more on how they can revise and expand their own understanding of women's rights in response to the struggles of other women, many of whom view women's rights as organic to their own cultures and as connected to broader social struggles.     

Understanding the supporters and opponents of Myanmar's civil disobedience movement against the military coup in 2021

In February 2021, the Myanmar military carried out a coup d'etat, which was then followed by a wave of civil protests. The present study aims to understand the support among people from Southeast Asia (specifically Indonesia) for the people of Myanmar who are fighting against a military coup. The data were collected from Muslim participants (N = 209) and non-Muslim participants (N = 192) in Indonesia. The findings indicate that the perceived country's internal problems, support for human rights in Myanmar, and the perceived country's important position in Southeast Asia are among the strongest predictors of the intention to support collective movements in other countries. Considerably, lack of empathy and how the victim/disadvantaged groups are perceived, like whether they have a negative rapport in treating other groups, also play a key role in the endorsement of solidarity. It is suggested that the dynamic relationships between these factors need to be considered to find ways to foster humanitarian solidarity. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement .     

Forgotten Victims of Military Humanitarian Intervention: A Case for the Principle of Reparation?

The purpose of this article is briefly to present a case for the principle of reparation as a new jus in bello principle for just humanitarian intervention. The article is divided into three sections. In “Restorative Justice and Civilian Protection”, I investigate the idea of restorative justice in order to consider whether or not it can complement the shortcomings of the just war tradition in civilian protection. In “The Legal Framework on Reparation: Its Scope and Limitations”, I examine the scope of the law of armed conflict on reparatory measures in order to consider whether and how ideas of and measures for restorative justice might be incorporated in the jus in bello framework for military humanitarian intervention. In “The Issue of Civilian Victims: A Case for Reparation”, I explore the implications of reparatory measures for victims in order to suggest that these measures are not only beneficial to civilian victims but also imperative to be taken by the interveners if they undertake military intervention within the jus in bello framework and claim its moral justifiability.     

The yom kippur war: The soldier on the front and his family

Abstract

The present report illustrates how uncertainty, continued stress and the transient “commuter” role of the soldier in the Yom Kippur War led to psychological disequilibrium on both the individual and familial level. On the individual level such phenomena as anger outbursts, apathy, depression and secondary impotence were observed and reported. These were often relieved through group discussions in the soldier's unit about the universality of such reactions to stress. On the familial level regressive behaviors, disciplinary problems, spouse conflict and diffuse anxiety were among the phenomena reported. In group discussions with soldiers and their spouses, it was suggested that candid and clear communication about the father-soldier's whereabouts and the nature of his military duties were necessary to prevent regression and permit active coping behavior. Conflicting expectations and role change resulting from the war situation were discussed in terms of how these might affect the family's functioning in such realms as child rearing, spouse relations and other familial matters. Death, mourning and bereavement were also discussed and it was suggested that family and friends are often more effective than professionals in helping relatives of the deceased do their mourning work.     

Screening,Brief Intervention,and Referral to Treatment for Military Spouses Experiencing Alcohol and Substance Use Disorders: A Literature Review

This paper provides an overview of alcohol and substance use issues in military spouses, and explore how the screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) model may enable health care providers to identify individuals at risk for developing substance use related disorders. The information presented is based on a broad literature scan relating to the characteristics of the military lifestyle, health infrastructure, screening and intervention processes, and the uses of SBIRT in military and civilian settings. Current literature suggests that military spouses, and families, tend to be at different points in their life course than civilian families of similar ages. Marrying earlier and having children sooner coupled with military lifestyle stressors place them at increased risk for developing adverse coping mechanisms, particularly during deployment. SBIRT has been recognized as an effective method among civilian patients although there is limited research on the efficacy of SBIRT for military spouses at risk of or experiencing substance use problems.     

NEW VISIONS FOR ENGAGED BUDDHISM: THE JUNGTO SOCIETY AND THE INDRA'S NET COMMUNITY MOVEMENT IN CONTEMPORARY KOREA

This paper examines two major Buddhist movements in contemporary South Korea, the Jungto Society and Indra's Net Community, which address issues in daily lives of lay people. Visionary monks began these movements: Jungto was established by P?mnyun in 1988, and Indra's Net by Tob?p in 1999. Both began as grassroots communities based on Buddhist principles, seeking an alternative way of thinking and living in response to contemporary society's emphasis on mass consumption, commercialism, competition, and the exploitation of the natural resources. While their activities overlap in promoting peace and ecological preservation, Jungto is better known for its humanitarian aid programmes in impoverished areas of the world, and the Indra's Net for its rural community movement in South Korea. With their steady and visible activities, these movements not only offer a new vision and work for lay Buddhists but also appeal to a wider population by involving the general public.     

Modernizing the Virtue of Humility

This paper offers a novel, secular account of the virtue of humility. There are only two such accounts in recent philosophical literature: one defended by Julia Driver, the other by George Schueler. Driver attaches the virtue of humility to people who underestimate their merits, or lack beliefs about their merits altogether. Schueler thinks that humility requires indifference to how we are regarded vis-à-vis our accomplishments. This paper brings out the limitations of those accounts and constructs a new one which is free of them.

The new account derives directly from the under-appreciated approach defended a century ago by Hastings Rashdall, who developed a secular (albeit religiously-inspired) account of humility according to which true humility reflects love for one's neighbour. After indicating the flaws in Rashdall's approach, I develop an account based on his intuitions. Specifically, I argue that humility requires suppressing our egos when they lead us to neglect or disregard other duties. Humility comprises two dimensions: a private dimension, for when we uphold self-regarding duties rather than succumb to the temptations of ego; and a public dimension, for when we display fidelity to other-regarding duties at the expense of the pleasures of ego.     

Basic Positive Duties of Justice and Narveson's Libertarian Challenge

Are positive duties to help others in need mere informal duties of virtue or can they also be enforceable duties of justice? In this paper I defend the claim that some positive duties (which I call basic positive duties) can be duties of justice against one of the most important principled objections to it. This is the libertarian challenge, according to which only negative duties to avoid harming others can be duties of justice, whereas positive duties (basic or nonbasic) must be seen, at best, as informal moral requirements or recommendations. I focus on the contractarian version of the libertarian challenge as recently presented by Jan Narveson. I claim that Narveson's contractarian construal of libertarianism is not only intuitively weak, but is also subject to decisive internal problems. I argue, in particular, that it does not provide a clear rationale for distinguishing between informal duties of virtue and enforceable duties of justice, that it can neither successfully justify libertarianism's protection of negative rights nor its denial of positive ones, and that it fails to undermine the claim that basic positive duties are duties of global justice.     

The Market for Bodily Parts: Kant and duties to oneself

ABSTRACT The demand for bodily parts such as organs is increasing, and individuals in certain circumstances are responding by offering parts of their bodies for sale. Is there anything wrong in this? Kant had arguments to suggest that there is, namely that we have duties towards our own bodies, among which is the duty not to sell parts of them. Kant's reasons for holding this view are examined, and found to depend on a notion of what is intrinsically degrading. Rom Harré's recent revision of Kant's argument, in terms of an obligation to preserve the body's organic integrity, is considered. Harré's view does not rule out all acts of selling, but he too ultimately depends on a test of what is intrinsically degrading. Both his view and Kant's are rejected in favour of a view which argues that it does make sense to speak of duties towards our own bodies, grounded in the duty to promote the flourishing of human beings, including ourselves. This provides a reason for opposing the sale of bodily parts, and the current trend towards the market ethic in health care provision.