Despite the largely instrumental application of human rights norms in Security Council Resolution 688, their inclusion had profound, if unintended, effects on the meaning of state sovereignty and the legitimate purpose of military force. In May 1991 the United States’ representative to the Security Council, Thomas Pickering, drew attention to changing normative expectations: “The response to the plight of the Kurds suggests a shift in world opinion towards a re-balancing of the claims of sovereignty and those of extreme humanitarian need. This is good news since it means we are moving closer to deterring genocide and aiding its victims. However, it also means we have much careful thinking to do about the nature of, and the limitations upon, intervention to carry out humanitarian assistance programs where States refuse, in pursuit of ‘policies of repression,’ to give permission to such assistance.”92 Similarly, UN secretary-general Pérez de Cuéllar wrote in his 1991 report to the General Assembly that the ability of states to hide their human rights abuses behind the shield of state sovereignty was diminishing: “It is now increasingly felt that the principle of non-interference within the essential domestic jurisdiction of States cannot be regarded as a protective barrier behind which human rights could be massively or systematically violated with impunity.”93 Security Council action in Iraq ushered in a new normative context where human rights norms were growing in their international legitimacy and changing the meaning of state sovereignty and by extension the legitimate purpose of military force.
Conclusions
The Iraq case demonstrates that Security Council unity around a common causal story (in this case an intentional story about interstate aggression) that resonates with an international audience and has the backing of powerful proponents makes the use of military force possible. Justifications for the subsequent coercive response to Iraqi violations of human rights illustrate the growing legitimacy of human rights norms and their ability to shape UNSC decision making alongside considerations of national and international security interests and other powerful international norms such as sovereignty and nonintervention. Resolution 688 marked a fundamental shift in council behavior—the linkage of human rights norms to the maintenance of international security and the use of enforcement measures to curtail human rights violations being perpetrated by a state member of the United Nations against its own people when it negatively affected the security and stability of neighboring states.
Defining the effects of human rights violations as an international security threat was a radical departure from previous Security Council behavior, yet the council sought to maintain its commitment to existing Westphalian conceptions of sovereignty and nonintervention norms. The UNSC was able to promote human rights and protect state sovereignty simultaneously because Iraqi sovereignty had been temporarily suspended and because its referents for sovereign authority were Kuwait, Iran, and Turkey. Human rights mattered to the Security Council in 1991 but largely because their violation had negative consequences for other sovereign states. Most Security Council members articulated an instrumental conception of human rights—they were a means to some other end (international peace and security) rather than an end in themselves. Yet the instrumental adoption of human rights norms by the Security Council created precedent and a political opening for members who believe that the gross and systematic human rights violations warrant Security Council attention. The Security Council response to the situation of Iraq demonstrates that human rights norms and sovereignty norms are coevolving. Ideas about human rights, combined with the Security Council response to Iraqi repression, altered the meaning of sovereignty and introduced a new possibility for the legitimate use of military force—enforcement action in defense of human rights. The passage of Resolution 688 created a precedent for future Security Council humanitarian intervention that would be exercised in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, and Libya.
Chapter 3
State Collapse in Somalia and the Emergence of Security Council Humanitarian Intervention
When Somalia made it onto the United Nations Security Council agenda in January 1992, the council members were newly optimistic about their ability to react promptly and effectively in concert with one another to threats to international peace and security. Just the year before, the council had reversed Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait and stopped the Iraqi regime from violating the human rights of its population. As a result, the meaning of state sovereignty, the relationship between human rights norms and international security, and beliefs about the legitimate purpose of military force were evolving. In 1992, however, the post–Cold War order that council members collectively desired and expected was challenged by mounting threats to international peace and security originating from conflicts raging within states rather than between them. Indeed, eleven of the sixteen situations on the 1992 Security Council agenda were characterized as intrastate conflicts. This represents nearly 70 percent of the situations on the 1992 Security Council agenda compared to only 27 percent at the start of the Iraq-Kuwait crisis in 1990.1 The Security Council was being called on to create the political conditions necessary to end conflict and no longer to simply observe and monitor peace agreements after conflicts had ended. In another example of this changed context, the Security Council recommended the admission of more new states as members of the United Nations between 1990 and 1992 than in the previous fifteen years; and nearly three-quarters were the result of the breakup of states.2 This represented the greatest spike in UN membership since the period of decolonization in the 1960s. In short, the UNSC faced a changing international context characterized by civil wars, gross human rights violations, and mass death, which demanded new and innovative responses at the very moment it had started to fulfill its original purpose—to maintain international peace between states.
The crisis in Somalia had to compete for Security Council attention with other internal crises on the council’s agenda, including Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, El Salvador, Liberia, Rwanda, and South Africa. In the competition for attention, some Security Council members and many African states complained that Somalia received scant attention and disproportionately fewer UN resources than the crisis in Bosnia. Indeed, the council met more than one hundred times to discuss the situation in Bosnia compared to less than twenty to discuss Somalia between 1992 and 1995. Nonetheless, humanitarian intervention happened in Somalia more than two years before the serious use of military force to defend Bosnian Muslims occurred in Bosnia. For reasons explained in this chapter, Security Council members decided that a robust military response to the Somalia crisis would demonstrate the international community’s resolve to respond to new post–Cold War security threats. The decision to authorize the use of military force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter was different from preceding UNSC justifications for the use of force, resulted in the enhanced legitimacy of human rights norms, and led to the emergence of a new Security Council practice—humanitarian intervention.3 The case of Somalia marked an important advance in the emerging idea that the international community in general, and the Security Council in particular, had a responsibility to respond to humanitarian crises caused by conflict in order to end human suffering. At the same time, it raised questions about the UN’s ability to do so effectively, with serious implications for subsequent cases.
Humanitarian intervention became possible because Security Council members were united around a causal story about the cause and character of the conflict and because Somalia was essentially deemed a failed state. The absence of a legitimate sovereign authority eliminated potential tensions between protecting humanitarian values including human rights, intervening militarily into a domestic humanitarian crisis, and protecting state sovereignty. Initially, members were divided between an inadvertent story about civil war and a complex story that also included armed banditry, gang violence, and interclan fighting. The Chapter VII authorization in December 1992 coincided with the complex story, in large part because of the absence of a legitimate state structure, the Security Council was forced to choose between responding to the humanitarian crisis or letting it continue unabated. The latter