A CONTEMPORARY VIEW ON INTERVENTION AND THE LIMITS OF SOVEREIGNTY IN A FLUID WORLD

Abstract

Armed conflicts around the world have led to an impasse that appears to have hindered the growth of international law and its supposed influence on global affairs. The increasing insecurity and armed conflict between states could have been mitigated if there were robust international laws regulating intra-state affairs. However, this paper does not primarily focus on the inadequacy of laws, but rather on the seemingly absurd concept of sovereignty that certain international laws, such as the United Nations Charter, have shaped to the extent that it distorts the functionality of external intervention when deemed necessary. The paper offers insights into how international law and the regulation of state activities would benefit from a redefinition of the concept of sovereignty as outlined in the UN Charter. It achieves this by reviewing the conceptual grounding of sovereignty from a theoretical perspective, aiming to establish that sovereignty is now more relative than absolute. Therefore, external intervention should operate when circumstances demand it, to strengthen the notion of the responsibility to protect and underscore the value that the international community places on human life.