Reading Humanitarian Intervention
Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law

Uses legal, feminist and postcolonial, and psychoanalytic theory to consider the cultural and economic effects of militarized humanitarianism.

Anne Orford (Author)

9780521804646, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 June 2003

260 pages
23.6 x 16.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.56 kg

'… assists us by providing a theoretical structure in which the relevant issues can be understood and a series of case studies of how things have gone wrong in the past. While [the author] has not made future decisions any easier, her book may contribute to making them better …' Chris Sidoti, NSW Law Society Journal

During the 1990s, humanitarian intervention seemed to promise a world in which democracy, self-determination and human rights would be privileged over national interests or imperial ambitions. Orford provides critical readings of the narratives that accompanied such interventions and shaped legal justifications for the use of force by the international community. Through a close reading of legal texts and institutional practice, she argues that a far more circumscribed, exploitative and conservative interpretation of the ends of intervention was adopted during this period. The book draws on a wide range of sources, including critical legal theory, feminist and postcolonial theory, psychoanalytic theory and critical geography, to develop ways of reading directed at thinking through the cultural and economic effects of militarized humanitarianism. The book concludes by asking what, if anything, has been lost in the move from the era of humanitarian intervention to an international relations dominated by wars on terror.

Preface
1. Watching East Timor
2. Misreading the texts of international law
3. Localizing the other: the imaginative geography of humanitarian intervention
4. Self-determination after intervention: the international community and post-conflict reconstruction
5. The constitution of the international community: colonial stereotypes and humanitarian narratives
6. Dreams of human rights
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], International law [LB], International relations [JPS], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ]