ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the doctrine of humanitarian intervention in international law and the tension between sovereignty and human rights as featured in the UN Charter. It discusses some of the attempts of scholars who try to justify the doctrine in State affairs, based on legal or moral grounds. Following the military defeat of Iraq in Kuwait, the Shi'a population of southern Iraq and the Kurdish population of northern Iraq rose in revolt against the government of Iraq. The unilateral action by the US against Iraq in September 1996, the situation of the Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq and the reasons behind the Kurdish armed clash will be highlighted briefly, in order to understand better the crisis in this region. The Just War theory, however, has usually recognised the principle of defence in another sense, where one State may come to the aid of another State that is being unjustly attacked by a third State.
