Appeals for humanitarian intervention in African affairs increased during the first decade of the twenty-first century; military intervention for other ends also intensified. The ongoing struggle to secure energy and other strategic resources and the onset of the war on terror brought renewed attention to the continent. Heightened foreign military presence, external support for repressive regimes, and disreputable alliances purportedly intended to root out terror resulted in new forms of foreign intervention in Africa. The continent, its people, and its resources again became the object of internal and external struggles in which local concerns were frequently subordinated to foreign interests.
Paradigm 1: Response to Instability and the Responsibility to Protect
The political, economic, and social upheavals that characterized the late Cold War and early post–Cold War periods resulted in severe instability in numerous African states and regions. Foreign powers and multilateral institutions took note when domestic turmoil was perceived to jeopardize international peace and security. In most instances, their involvement entailed brokering, monitoring, and enforcing peace agreements. Diplomatic and military interventions were often justified on the grounds that outside actors had both the right and the responsibility to guarantee international peace and security if individual states failed to do so. In such cases, intervention was authorized under Chapters VI, VII, or VIII of the United Nations Charter, adopted in 1945.2 In instances where large civilian populations were at risk and refugee flows heightened regional tensions, the response to instability was bolstered by newer claims that the international community had a responsibility to protect civilian lives. In such cases, intervention was justified by the 2005 UN General Assembly resolution, mentioned above, that bestowed on the international community the responsibility to protect civilians when their governments were unable or unwilling to do so.
Post–Cold War intervention in African affairs saw increased involvement by multinational bodies that drew on changing notions concerning the right to intervene. Since the mid-1990s, when the international community largely ignored appeals to thwart the Rwandan genocide, growing constituencies in Africa and the West have called for humanitarian interventions to end human rights abuses and protect civilians, with or without the consent of the states in question. Such interventions might include military force, sanctions, or the forcible delivery of humanitarian aid. Although the notion of humanitarian intervention has gained support, it remains controversial. External interference in a state’s domestic affairs challenges a premise of international law, national sovereignty, that has held sway for more than three and a half centuries.
The contemporary system of international law emerged from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties that concluded the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and laid the foundations for the modern nation-state. Enshrined in the treaties is the principle of national sovereignty, which granted monarchs control over feudal princes and inhabitants of their territories, as well as absolute power to maintain order within their realms and to protect the state from external forces. Deemed above the law, sovereigns were exempt from moral scrutiny. From 1648 until the end of World War II, the sovereignty of the nation-state was defined in such a way that internal conflicts and their consequences were considered domestic matters outside the purview of the international community. However, another seventeenth-century principle of international law eventually established a framework for a more expansive understanding of national sovereignty. The notion that a state and its citizenry are bound by a social contract that carries reciprocal rights and responsibilities gradually superseded the view that sovereigns are beyond moral scrutiny. If the social contract requires citizens to relinquish some of their liberties in exchange for state protection, then the state bears a responsibility to ensure its citizens’ welfare by protecting their rights and liberties and maintaining peace and security within state borders.
The mass exterminations of European Jews and other populations during World War II challenged the principles of international law that had allowed such crimes to occur, and the impunity of national leaders was called into question. The Nuremberg trials (1945–49), which held key individuals in Nazi Germany’s political, economic, and military establishment accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity, led to increased scrutiny of national leaders. The postwar order witnessed an expansion of democratic values and institutions. Universal principles of human rights were enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights, comprising the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), which required member nations “to prevent and to punish” genocide wherever and whenever it is found.3 Emergent human rights and humanitarian movements gave primacy to individual over states’ rights and emphasized the protection of minorities and other vulnerable members of society. National laws were no longer off limits to international investigation. Subject peoples in Europe’s African and Asian empires embraced universal human rights claims and demanded equal treatment under the law and national self-determination. In the 1950s and 1960s, their efforts culminated in widespread decolonization.
The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 further undermined the seventeenth-century notion that state sovereignty is absolute. Like the post–World War I League of Nations, the UN was founded to promote international peace and security. However, the UN’s mission, which was uniquely premised on respect for universal human rights and freedoms, led to a supplementary mandate. The UN was also charged with promoting “the economic and social advancement of all peoples.”4 Aware that conflicts were frequently rooted in material deprivation and in unequal distribution of power and resources, political and human rights leaders argued that the maintenance of international peace and security required governments to use their capacities to benefit all their citizens and that states should be held accountable for the protection of basic human rights within their borders.
The end of the Cold War brought additional challenges to the state sovereignty principle. The Soviet Union had disintegrated, and the United States and other Western powers no longer felt the same need for strongmen to protect their interests. Newly critical of their clients’ corrupt practices and human rights abuses, they withdrew their support from longstanding dictators and called for accountability in governance. These momentous political shifts provided opportunities for new ways of thinking, and a cadre of public intellectuals in the Global North and South began to argue for a fundamental reconceptualization of the premises of state sovereignty, one that harkened back to the social contract that sometimes had confounded sovereigns’ ability to wield their power with impunity. These thinkers charged that to legitimately claim sovereignty, a state must provide basic conditions for the well-being of its citizenry, including not only peace, security, and order, but also adequate food, clean water, clothing, shelter, health care, education, and employment. In some polities, dominant groups target populations who differ in race, ethnicity, or religion from those in power.