Topic 4: Humanitarian ethics and socially responsible engagement
The Just War
The concept that a war is ‘just’ stems from the aim to “regulate violence and to address the issue of when it is acceptable to harm others” (Shapcott, 2010, p151).
According to Caney (Justice beyond borders: A Global political theory 2005, New York, Oxford University Press) there are five conditions that must be met for an act of humanitarian intervention to be considered legitimate:
- When it is against a regime that is violating human rights (both economic and social).
- Proportionality; the costs cannot be ‘disproportionate in comparison to internal wrongs’ which the intervention is addressing.
- Humanitarian intervention resorted to only when least awful options have been considered. For instance, it could be argued that economic sanctions, or doing nothing, could result in more awful results than humanitarian intervention. In other words, the different costs of different harms have to be measured, including the harm of doing nothing.
- Humanitarian intervention must have a reasonable chance of meeting its objective, that is, of preventing the violation of human rights or preventing a worse violation of human rights than might otherwise occur.
- Right authority. Ideally, this means an ‘impartial and political authority.’
As Shapcott (2010, p181) comments “The thrust of the argument here is to focus on the procedural and democratic legitimacy of international institutions which authorize the use of force” and “Humanitarian intervention raises the question of whether a greater harm or injustice may be committed by not acting. Is doing nothing or failing to act, the same as committing harm?” (Shapcott, 2010, p182).
