Nigeria's Intervention in the Sierra Leonean Civil War

Humanitarian intervention and the protection of civilian populations

“…16 Though Duke argues for the third perspective and contends that there are "three broad approaches to the issue of the legality of humanitarian intervention: the restrictionists, who argue that humanitarian intervention is a violation of territorial integrity and political independence of the state; those closer to the natural law tradition, who argue that such intervention is permissible under the UN Charter since the UN has made an explicit commitment to the protection of human rights and such use of force falls below any threat to the territorial integrity of the state; and finally those who accept those supporting unilateral intervention argue that the development in international human rights law and the UN Charter had fundamental and radical impacts on international law. The school argues from the 'deontological moral standpoint', 17 that it is the human being, people, individual, as opposed to the state as the basic unit of analysis and concerns of international legal system; implying that nation-states get their legitimacy and even authority from people's will. In this context, sovereignty (in all its connotations) is not an inherent right of the states, rather derives from individual rights.…”