RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION, SOVEREIGNTY AND POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE OF STATES ON THE SCALE AND WAVELENGTH OF PRAGMATIC EXIGENCIES

Abstract

International  law  guards  jealously  the  territorial  integrity  or  political  independence  of  states.  Hence, it prohibits any action that will undermine this sacred principle.   The law also has  great respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.  The problem arises where there has to be a choice between safeguarding sovereignty or political independence for its sake, on the one hand, and violating sovereignty to protect human rights, on the other. This raises the issue of balancing the question of sovereignty with the imperative of protecting of human rights.  This study analyzed the contending issues and challenged the absolutist doctrine of sovereignty, with specific focus on Africa.  We concluded by holding that the dissonance between sovereignty and human rights could disappear if states protect and promote human rights the same way they guard their sovereignty.  International organizations have a responsibility of ensuring that states promote and protect human rights.    They  should  ensure  that  they  aggregate  the  principles  of  responsibility  to  protect,  of humanitarian  intervention  and  of  just  war  to  make  them  binding  norms  of  international  law.  Sovereignty and human rights ought to operate in accord.  Intervention in the territory of a sovereign stateto prevent or halt genocide or other crimes violates the  principle  of  territorial  integrity  and  political  independence  of  states  as  guaranteed  under  the Charter  of  the  United  Nations1,  for  instance.  The  General  Assembly  of  the  United  Nations  has condemned, in unmistakable terms, armed intervention and other forms of interference, thus:No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever in the internal or  external  affairs  of  any  other  State.  Consequently,  armed  interventionand  all  other  forms  of interference  or  attempted  threats  against  the  personality  of  the  State  or  against  its  political, economic and cultural elements, are condemned.