ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the issue of humanitarian interventions against genocide and humanitarian crimes. Humanitarian assistance aims to cope with some of the most pressing human consequences of war. Humanitarian workers seek to prevent violence but to ease the burden on civilian victims. Assuming that preemptive humanitarian intervention will generally be blocked at the global level, concerned states seem to be left with the uncomfortable alternatives of inaction, unilateral action, or regional multilateral action. North Atlantic Treaty Organization Kosovo intervention provoked the Canadian government to convene an independent commission to explore the changing nature of humanitarian law and humanitarian intervention in light of state sovereignty. The roots of Sudan’s long-running series of humanitarian crises go back to its colonial creation, which combined a largely Arab and Muslim North with a largely black and Christian and animist South. The violence directed at the non-Arab population was reminiscent of Serbian ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo.
