Lately, globalization has created tendency including governance. Thereby, many states have authorized international institution to intervene and mediate conflicts between global sides so as to preserve human rights and protect innocent people. However, we occasionally notice that it is not always the case as it was pretended to be. For instance, it is possible and true that such organizations can fail to protect human life, even on purpose. United Nation Security Council is entitled to maintain human rights in the global scale and thus it must intervene into conflicts which comprise threat to innocent civil people. Nevertheless, the circumstance of the Kosovo war allows us to think about and even question the legitimacy of this institution. …show more content…
Therefore, this country has faced with many difficulties in its history, especially with internal complications. However, despite that fact that the government have tried to overcome those problems, for instance, civil people are against the government, the country have faced with unethical intervention of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In interesting to note that this was more than the act of intervening since it has leaded to death of thousands of people which gives us justification to name this action as illegal due to crisis and killing of many. In contrast, taking all of these into account, there is another important organization that had ultimate legitimacy and was legal to take action for the issue. This was United Nation Security Council that had a legal right to make intervention to those problems in Kosovo, but this organization did not approach neither to make intervention nor prevented massive crime that was committed by NATO. As a result, the region undergone unpredictable losses in the number of population, natural resources, and particularly homes since most of people leaved their motherland due to …show more content…
Death of majority of population indicates direct impact of the war in Kosovo that witnessed. The diseases that have occurred in people was one of these indirect effects. As Josef Martinsen stresses out that people still suffer from neurologically and physiological diseases which possibly those who have witnessed the violent in the war (2010, 22). In the article of Josef Martinsen, various interviews from people who witnessed the war are demonstrated, and while reading these interviews, people become sad and shocked. For instance, it is shown that some children were murdered in front of the mothers’ eyes which resulted with mental diseases on them (Martinsen 2010, 43). Despite the fact that all these happened and were clearly demonstrated to readers, some of people argue that United Nation Security Council actually made right choice by allowing the war to happen. In contrast, these people go along with the idea that the adverse effects remained from the war which affected Kosovo for long time and could not be fixed quickly and
Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and is argued to have power to intervene in the most serious issues which disrupt world order.
The United Nations do multiple things such as following the devastation of the Second World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security. The UN does this by working to prevent conflict; helping parties in conflict make peace; peacekeeping; and creating the conditions to allow peace to hold and flourish. These activities often overlap and should reinforce one another, to be effective. The term “human rights” was mentioned seven times in the UN's founding Charter, making the promotion and protection of human rights a key purpose and guiding principle of the Organization. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought human rights into the realm of international law. Since then, the Organization has diligently protected human rights through legal instruments and on-the-ground activities. The united nations are a great group of people who are looking out for us ever since Canada has joined this group they have been able to make an impact such as. Today, Canada continues to uphold the UN by actively participating in the organization's activities and providing financial support. Canada consistently brings pragmatic ideas and solutions to the table, from peacekeeping proposals in the 1950s, to creating the International Criminal Court and banning landmines in the 1990s. Today, some of their current goals are to assist war-affected children, or to improve the UN’s management and
In 2003, President George Walker Bush and his administration sent the United States military to war in Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s ruler and dictator, who murdered over 600,000 innocent people, and “...used chemical weapons to remove Kurds from their villages in northern Iraq…” (Rosenberg 2). According to the Department of Defense’s website, the war removed Saddam Hussein from power, ending an era when “Iraqis had fewer rights than when its representatives signed the Human Rights Declaration in 1948” (1). American blood, money, and honor was spent in what was allegedly a personal war and perhaps a fight to gain oil and natural resources, but only history may reveal the truth. Although the Iraq War removed tyrant Saddam Hussein from power, the failures of the war dwarf the successes.
In both history and present day, many human rights violations have occurred in countries residing within the UN. Despite the attempts that international influence created through the UN, many countries such as the Soviet Union conducted serious human rights violations through attempts to quell uprisings or anti-government movements. Even in the present day, countries such as North Korea and China have been committing drastic human rights violations, despite existing within the United Nations. Because of these facts, it can be concluded that international influence does not necessarily create better human
The Bosnian, Srebrenica, and Herzegovina land was involved in an ethical war where ethnic cleansing was seen as a way to solidify the breaks in that region (“Bosnian Genocide”). The trigger of this ethnic war was the break-up of Yugoslavia from one country to three (Bosnia, Srebrenica, and Herzegovina) in 1990 (“Bosnian Genocide”). This rupture of Yugoslavia resulted in the massive dispute between Muslims, Serbs, and Croatians (Bennett). Not long after the war began, the Serbs began executing the Bosnian Muslims through ethnic cleansing, in order to fill the fissure that was created in 1990. The mass execution lasted three years and nine months, and did not end until the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened in 1995 (Bennett); by that time, an unforgettable 70,000 Bosnian citizens were executed by the Serbs (Perl 71). If NATO had intervened sooner, perhaps thousands of lives could have been saved and this haunting genocide may have had less of an impact on the world.
The fourth mission was to collect more information on Iraqis weapons of mass destruction activity, as with the objective of collecting information on other terrorist groups. The U.S military recovered documents on its illegal weapon programs. The fifth objective was too lock Iraq’s oil production and fields. Many people thought was the first objective because U.S military forces secured the filed within early hours of the war. The U.S had made announcement on April 14th, that all of Iraqis major oil sources were under control. There was very little damage on the resources. One of the last goals that were important to the United States was too give Iraq humanitarian relief and end sanctions. Even while the war was still in the process the U.S forces started to help the
Creating relations between races and ethnicity's has always been vital to the success of the world. The United States and the international community have been, more often than not, late to stop violent acts against humanity. It took decades after the United Nations was created, and after a horrendous genocide in Rwanda, for the International Criminal Court to be created. Despite these two establishments created for international peace and security, crimes against humans rights are still occurring.When human rights are being violated, it is necessary for the U.S. and its allies to intervene in ethnic conflicts. While others may say humanitarian intervention goes against a state’s sovereign authority,it is necessary to protect
nonmilitary costs of helping Kosovo recover from war and build stability". The U.S. could have struck against Milosevic quicker had it not had to be in
Articles 1, 55, and 56 are the center pieces for promoting and protecting human rights. During the cold war humanitarian intervention went stagnant because the two superpowers who were facing off (US & Russia) were at odds about ideology and this caused world peace to be thrown into turmoil. The UN was very new and did not have the international legal clout to stop either superpower from promoting its system of governance through invasion or indirect military support. The Cold War caused social, economic, and political upheaval globally which allowed for the UN to revise its interpretation of humanitarian intervention. This allowed for a larger consensus among nations about which circumstances required intervention. From 1945 to 1976 five major human rights documents were adopted; The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Genocide Convention, Geneva Convention, Laws of War, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Cultural Economic Civil Rights. The end of the Cold War “liberated the UN which had established 20 new peace keeping missions from 1988-1993, more than it had taken in its entire 40 year history.” (Taha, 14) The major developments of the 1990‘s for international humanitarian
In the pursuit of positive peace for the global community, certain mechanisms are necessary in order to better protect human rights and resolve interstate conflicts. Prior to the events of World War II, a cogent set of laws defining those human rights, much less violations therein were never heard at an international scale. The International Criminal Court has the role as both appellate for justice and voice for peace in the international community but has not yet resolve the contradictory ends of both roles. That contradictory end is that many countries proclaim the necessity of the International Criminal Court as an advocate for conflict resolution and peace advocacy while being resist or outright antagonistic towards the court when their own state has committed those same crimes. To the ends of defending basic universal rights, the International Criminal Court (hereafter ICC) serves that capacity when state level systems cannot or will not act accordingly.
To better understand the atrocities of these wars, one must have knowledge of the definitions of certain terms and war crimes. The ideas of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” are often thrown
The land of Kosovo has been plagued with tension for hundreds of years being claimed by several surrounding countries. The two biggest contenders, Albanians in Kosovo and Serbia have been fighting for the land, which culminated in a full war from 1998-1999. The war brought international attention to the war crimes committed by both sides, and proved that the two countries had years to go before coming to a solution. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) led by Kosovo Albanians, and the Serbian militia led by President Slobodan Milošević committed heinous crimes against their enemies. Crimes range from ethnic cleansing to rape and destruction of whole villages. The violence created a serious refugee problem that is still relevant today.
The United Nations, with its rigid moral and political limitations against force, has become a benchmark of peace and a social achievement of modern times. From war torn Europe, the United Nations developed from five major powers with an initial goal to prevent the spread of warfare through peaceful means and to establish and maintain fundamental human rights. Through the past fifty years, this organization has broadened its horizons with auxiliary organizations from peace keeping missions to humanitarian aid, to economic development. However, in a modern example of ethnic cleansing, the UN faces new a new role as a bystander as its power is bypassed by NATO forces. The UN, however, promises to be an
The supporting and advocating on behalf of human rights has been one of the primary principles of the United Nations. Since its founding in 1945, the United Nations has worked to preserve the basic human rights and fundamental freedoms it believes to be deserved of by every man, woman, and child on the planet. Throughout the near seventy years of the United Nations’ existence, it has been challenged with an array of questions, events, and claims regarding the possible violation of human rights. In order to combat these claims, the body has established two organizations to deal with matters of human rights. The first being the Commission Human Rights, was the original organization, founded in 1946. The Commission existed
The United Nations is widely regarded and respected as the most powerful institution that promotes international cooperation and human rights action. In theory, actions implemented by and within the United Nations are based on the mutual global goal of protecting international human rights and preventing human sufferings. These actions are constituted through three main mechanisms: the Treaty-based system, the Human Rights Council, and Security Council and Humanitarian Interventions, with the level of confrontation and seriousness in each mechanism increases respectively. While aimed to serve the mutual goal of protecting human rights over the world and have shown some successes, in a world of sovereignty, actions when implemented are in fact grounded by the national interests of each state, including embracing its national sovereignty, concreting its strategic relationships with other states, and enhancing its reputation in the international community. This paper will analyze the successes and failures of each of the three mechanisms of the United Nations regime, through which it aims to prove that when it comes to actions, states focus more on their national, and in some cases, regional interests than on the mutual goal of strengthening human rights throughout the world, thus diminishing the legitimacy of the whole United Nations system.