ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the ethical implications of the humanitarian crises that have multiplied during the era of global disorder and realignment precipitated by the end of the Cold War. It presents a promising philosophical underpinning for the pioneering effort by International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to reconceptualize sovereignty in terms of a responsibility to protect. ICISS was established to address the problem of reconciling demands for legal recognition of a right of humanitarian intervention with the existing or possible structure of the international legal order. By adapting a philosophical framework based on the early account of human flourishing proposed by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, a persuasive and logically consistent foundation for the responsibility to protect can be developed. Nussbaum increasingly emphasized the importance of subscribing to a single universalizable list of human functionings and capabilities as a means of developing such a justification.
