Folkrättsprofessorn Mary Ellen O’Connell, University of Notre Dame, har recenserat Chiara Redaellis klargörande bok Intervention in Civil Wars. Effectiveness, Legitimacy, and Human Rights. (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2021)
Frågorna i boken är vad lagen säger om humanitära interventioner och om inbjudan till en militär intervention.
Mary Ellen O’Connell säger: ”The place to begin any discussion of armed intervention is with the jus cogens prohibition on the use of force.”
Jus cogens innebär att lagen är tvingande för de 195 staterna i världen.
Recensenten fortsätter: ”The three exceptions to the prohibition are the use of force for self-defence, United Nations Security Council authorization and consent.”
Begreppet ”consent” väcker frågan om vem, under eller efter ett inbördeskrig, som har rätt att bjuda in annan stat att bistå med vapenmakt.
Mary Ellen O’Connell finner bokens ståndpunkt övertygande: ”This means that, under international law’s abstention rule, ‘states must not intervene on behalf of either the government or the insurgents, if the results of the revolt are uncertain. They must not even recognize the insurgents until the insurgents have in fact established themselves as the government of the state or of a revolting community’. Insurgents establish themselves as a government by exercising effective administrative control of most of a state’s territory. The government will retain the right to invite intervention, however, in order to counter military intervention in favour of insurgents. Interpreting the law to find a broader right for either governments or insurgents to invite fails to honour the principle of no derogation from jus cogens. It also lacks sufficient state practice to support it as a rule from a positivist perspective.”
För övrigt påpekar Mary Ellen O’Connell: ”Highly regarded studies show that outside intervention in internal conflict does not lead to communities where human rights, democracy and the rule of law flourish. An issue for future international legal scholarship is why advocacy for intervention persists despite the data against it. An answer may lie in the influence of realist-militarist political theory that defies reality and the rule of law.”
Recensenten påpekar vidare att frågan om kontroll inte sätter den folkrättsliga principen om ”no fruit of aggression” ur spel: ”The one situation where effective control is not used to evaluate the lawfulness of foreign interventions are instances of conquest. When a state invades another state – as Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974, Iraq Kuwait in 1990 and Russia Ukraine in 2014, to name three straightforward cases, replacing the government with its own puppet rulers – the ousted government retains its legal status in exile, despite the loss of control. In this situation, it is generally accepted that the abstention rule does not protect the conqueror, even where it exercises effective control. These rare interstate cases are quite different from internal conflict. The foreign occupier has certain duties based on effective control, but de jure recognition belongs only to the exiled government, regardless of how many years the occupier remains.”
Mary Ellen O’Connell anger därtill att ”Redaelli understands international law to be silent respecting the right of insurgents to resort to armed conflict against a government. She is correct that the drafters of the UN Charter did not have such groups in mind when drafting the Article 2(4) prohibition on the use of force or the Article 51 provision for self-defence. Article 2(4) is, however, not the only consideration. Human rights law clearly restricts such killing as it does the excessive use of force by governments. The jus cogens prohibition on the use of force also restricts all resort to organized, significant force, regardless of the party initiating it.”
Recensenten är dock kritisk mot att ”Redaelli draws heavily on the example of national liberation movements (NLMs) of the 1960s and 1970s to support the right of today’s insurgents to receive military assistance in order to throw off home-grown oppressors. Her choice of analogy is intriguing but ultimately fails to persuade. National liberation movements fought conquering foreign armies. The old colonial powers had more in common with invaders like Turkey, Iraq and Russia. As in the case of unlawful conquest (the accepted exception to contemporary international law’s abstention rule), the lines of demarcation were clear as to who should or should not be in control of territory and people.”
Mary Ellen O’Connell avslutar sin recension med att konstatera att boken ”supports drawing the pro-intervention era to a close”. Således bör boken finnas i varje folkrättsbibliotek värt namnet.