ABSTRACT
The concept of humanitarian intervention is where the gap between what is perceived as legitimate or actually legal – that is, between the spirit and letter of the law – is widest. The forcible protection of human rights involves debates regarding, says Britain’s Jim Whitman, “the three most fundamental organizational systems of human social life: law, morality and politics” (2005: 259). This apparent conflict is based on the perception that the UN Charter and international law do not reflect the contemporary notion that respect for sovereignty and non-interference are conditional on the state’s respect for human rights.According to the ICISS, this “long due internationalization of the human conscience” has left the UN struggling to find a way of balancing its two core values: the protection of state sovereignty and human rights (2001: 9).
