RT Article
T1 Reconciling Just Causes for Armed Humanitarian Intervention
JF Ethical theory and moral practice
VO 19
IS 2
SP 313
OP 328
A1 Aloyo, Eamon
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2016
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1565743342
AB Michael Walzer argues that the just cause for humanitarian intervention is not met if there are only “ordinary” levels of human rights abuses within a state because he believes that respecting the right to collective self-determination is more morally important than protecting other individual rights. Several prominent critics of Walzer advocate for a more permissive account of a just cause. They argue that protecting individuals’ human rights is more morally important than respecting a right to collective self-determination. I argue that these two accounts are far more similar than either Walzer or his critics realize because collective self-determination requires the protection of some human rights in order to allow each person the opportunity to participate in collective choices. Consequently, the just cause for intervention is met whenever at least some important human rights of one person are violated and others are being credibly threatened. The counter intuitive conclusion of my argument is that justified interventions can actually promote rather than undermine collective self-determination because just interventions allow innocents, who otherwise would have excluded from this process, the opportunity to contribute to collective choices. Of course, a just cause is insufficient in itself for intervention to be permissible because other just war precepts must also be met.
K1 Collective self-determination
K1 Human Rights
K1 Humanitarian Intervention
K1 just cause
K1 Just War Theory
K1 Sovereignty
DO 10.1007/s10677-015-9594-4