Human Security & UN Interventions
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The United Nations deals with human rights questions either through the use of "preventive diplomacy" and "public pressure" or, more rarely, through direct intervention (Boutros-Ghali 91-2). Increasingly, however, it has become difficult in many cases to separate the protection of human rights from either direct military intervention or from missions to provide humanitarian aid. UN interventions take place where there is a very serious need for humanitarian aid (as in the recent mission to Somalia) or a need for an outside force to broker peace and keep cease-fires in place (as in the current intervention in Bosnia). The UN does not directly intervene in most cases where a sovereign state is engaged in the regular, daily violation of the rights of its citizens. In those cases the UN works from outside by attempting to provide aid, relief and education, by imposing sanctions, and by trying to arrange agreements between parties that will restore human rights to the people. Yet even when operating from the outside and not directly interfering in a nation's problems, the UN's human rights efforts are contiguous with its "efforts to maintain peace and security" ("Ethnic" 72). In recent years the UN has begun to place increased importance on the protection of human rights and to merge it with the rest of its security functions. This has led to greater involvement in civil wars where rights protection is badly needed. The UN has been moving toward a new definition of secur
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ng of the UN function first became policy when the heads of state of the members of the United Nations Security Council held their first-ever summit meeting in 1992. They met to discuss the strategies to be employed by the organization in a world without the Cold War. Their decision to concentrate on human security even when it means intervening in nations' internal affairs can be seen in the UN's recent record. Of the eleven new operations undertaken by the Council since that summit, nine have been deployed in civil wars (Weiss 223). In the new world the UN views all the problems humanity faces as being interconnected. "Famine, disease, pollution, drug trafficking, terrorism, ethnic disputes, and social integration [have] consequences [that] travel the globe" (United Nations 229). Thus, although respect for national sovereignty remains essential, the UN has increasingly redefined those cases in which it is both necessary and justified "to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state" (UN Charter quoted by Weiss 223). These words from the Charter describe the actions the UN was not to take. But under the new thinking intervention is allowable in cases where there actually is no s
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1590
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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