The norm of humanitarian intervention and state behaviour: an assessment of the norm's role in humanitarian intervention and non-intervention

Abstract

This study focuses on the determining factors behind a states' decision to intervene or not to intervene in humanitarian crises in other states. To be more specific it focuses on the emerged norm of humanitarian intervention and whether it became the dominating reason behind the United States' decisions to intervene or not in another state's domestic affairs on the grounds of humanitarian crises in the post Cold War era. This thesis concludes that the emerged norm of humanitarian intervention had no impact or played no role on the United States' decision to intervene or not in humanitarian crises in Somalia and Rwanda in the post Cold War era.