ABSTRACT
The refrain of ‘never again’ ensured the inclusion of human rights provisions in the United Nations (UN) Charter at San Francisco in 1945. Three years later the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the UN General Assembly (GA), inspired by ‘opposition to the barbarous doctrines of Nazism and fascism’,1 which consolidated the Charter pledge to promote ‘universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all’.2
While the UN Charter and the UDHR bring human rights into the purview of legitimate international concern, the refrain of ‘never again’ continues to reverberate. The Rwandan genocide, the massacre at Srebrenica and the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in the 1990s along with, for example, the humanitarian crises in Darfur, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) today bring into sharp relief the ‘dilemma of intervention’ facing the UN. This intervention dilemma was characterised by UN Secretary-General (SG) Annan as a choice between the ‘defence of sovereignty’ and the ‘defence of humanity’3 and directly engages the issue of humanitarian intervention by the UN Security Council (UNSC).4
