Process Reengineering
...rights violations all across the world. The conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka bring back vivid memories of the helplessness of people that were affected. It is in this regard that the whole issue of International Intervention assumes and deserves heightened importance. While the reluctance of nations to get involved in pressing political, social and diplomatic issues in their geographical neighborhood in spite of their apparently deep sense of morality and all the extensive media coverage is hard to believe, the problem is, of course, more complicated. In the prevailing world scenario, the unilateral intervention of US in Iraq and the subsequent quagmire in which the US finds itself has opened the debate on the right to mediation in the internal affairs of the other country. Is the intervention on the grounds of humanitarian violations justified even if it impinges on the concept of territorial sovereignty and a country's right of self determination. The traditional Westphalian concept of sovereignty can no longer provide guidance for such interventions, and the UN Charter itself is ambiguous, affirming both the primacy of human rights and the concept of state sovereignty. Those who support humanitarian intervention stress the responsibility of powerful countries to address gross and systemic human rights violations wherever and whenever possible but such a precedent can put the international standards of Self determination in disarray.
In his millennium report to the UN, Secretary-General Kofi Annan posed a question "If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica—to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity? We confront a real dilemma. Few would disagree that both the defense of humanity and the defense of...
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