The Ethics of humanitarian intervention, With Jonathan Parry
The Rwandan Genocide was one of the most horrific events of the twentieth century. After decades of unrest between Rwanda’s two biggest tribes, the Tutsi’s and the Hutu’s, civil war finally broke out on the 7th of April 1994, and over the next thirty days, 800,000 people were killed in cold blood, while the world stood back and watched. UN forces were in Rwanda at the time, but they were ordered not to intervene, and many withdrew within the first few weeks of fighting.
Kofi Annan, Head of Peacekeeping at the UN during the genocide, later said: “All of us must bitterly regret that we did not do more to prevent it. On behalf of the United Nations, I acknowledge this failure and express my deep recourse”. This acknowledgement that the world should have done more to end the genocide led to the development of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, which forms the main political framework for deliberating about humanitarian intervention.
But do states ever have a responsibility to protect the human rights of citizens in other states? And what moral considerations need to be taken into account when doing so?
Hamza King sits down with Jonathan Parry to discuss the ethics of humanitarian intervention. Jonathan is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and author of The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention: An Introduction (2025).
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