Discuss your position on military interventions set for humanitarian purposes without UNSC. The legitimate use of military force under IL can only occur in two circumstances (exception to the support towards self-determination): in circumstances of self-

Please discuss your position on military interventions set for humanitarian purposes without UNSC.

The legitimate use of military force under IL can only occur in two circumstances (exception to the support towards self-determination): in circumstances of self-defense and when authorized by the UN Security Council, under Chap.VII of the UN Charter. Therefore, if not in self-defense which also needs to fulfill certain criteria as established by the ICJ in “Case concerning Oil Platforms” (Islamic Republic of Iran v. United States of America, 2003), the international community is categorical when establishing the need for UNSC approval.

A long debate on the morality of the use of force for humanitarian purposes has revived after the attacks on civil population in Iraq (1991); ethnic cleansing in Bosnia (1992) and the genocide in Rwanda (1994). The plan to intervene for humanitarian reasons in Kosovo in 1998, was led by NATO and failed to receive UNSC authorization. NATO intervened nonetheless, and possibly due to the severity of the atrocities and the political veto of China and Russia in the UNSC, the military mission in Kosovo was recognized, a posteriori, as“illegal but legitimate” by the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, reporting directly to the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “The NATO intervention was, the Commission concludes, illegal but legitimate. It was illegal because it did not receive approval from the UN Security Council but it was legitimate because all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted and there was no other way to stop the killings and atrocities in Kosovo.” (The Kosovo Report