International community interventions in the conflicts that escalate tensions in a particular country, threatening the peace and well-being of the whole world, are not prohibited and are even approved by the ICC. However, historically, the international community did not manage to intervene in all the severe conflicts. Thus, in 1994 when the government of Rwanda initiated the genocide against the Tutsi, such influential countries as the United States, the UK, and France were not eager to intervene. Such reluctance became the reason for public outrage and enabled these governments to consider humanitarian or military intervention for specific purposes (Carter, 2019).
Together with the UN, the international community could not prevent the genocide in Rwanda due to the lack of critical assessment of the situation in the region. This crisis proved the importance of humanitarian intervention and its crucial role in compliance with international human rights. The international community learned several lessons from the failed attempts of humanitarian intervention and did not hesitate to resist the Quaddafi regime in order to protect the citizens of Libya in 2011. The Libyan government’s opposition conditioned the humanitarian intervention on Western policies (Carter, 2019). Thus, the intervention into Libya had two major objectives, which were to help Libyan citizens and to save them from Quaddafi’s dictatorship, which violated their rights, and to get one more ally in Africa.
When comparing the degree of humanitarian intervention in Rwanda in 1994 and in Libya in 2011, it is necessary to note the different attitudes of the international community toward these two conflicts. Since human rights are the main priority of the UN and NATO, their violation should be properly punished and suppressed. International organizations regarded the previous experiences of failed interventions and the public outrage that followed. Hence, they put enforcement of human rights and provided aid to those whose rights were violated. That is why so much attention was paid to the conflict in Libya as well as to all the conflicts that followed.
Reference
Carter, V. (2019). Hope for another humanitarian intervention? Rwanda, Kosovo, Libya and the consequences of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) on Myanmar. (Publication № 2261) [Bachelor’s thesis, Union College]. Union Digital Works.