Search results
inescapable, as enshrined, for example, in international humanitarian law (IHL), including the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005; the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC); and customary international law ( Brooks, 2015 ). On the other hand, the interview findings of this study reveal a widespread sense of frustration among aid workers over the perceived inefficacy of the law in practice for the protection of humanitarian action. Even in light of the existence of not only international courts and tribunals but
‘there is no “right” of humanitarian intervention in either the UN Charter or customary international law’. 89 Friedrich Kratochwil generally takes a similar line, coming to the conclusion that no right of humanitarian intervention exists save in the cases of the ‘institution of the protection of nations’ or authorised under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. 90 As noted earlier, major states such as China and Russia opposed NATO
). The UN charters indeed represent significant achievements and have acquired the status of customary international law. They can indeed work as a starting-point for certain discussions. And it might even be true that the international rhetoric of rights represents ‘an implicit, submerged, or deflected expression of a sense of moral interdependence’ (Donnelly, 1989: 617). But this is a long way from the assertion that universality of standards has been achieved. What does such a degree of apparent self-confidence reflect? ‘Universality’ is here based on an appeal to a