Law, morality and international armed intervention: The United Nations and ECOWAS in Liberia

Humanitarian intervention lies at the fault line in international relations between the principles of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, on one hand, and the protection of human rights on the other. Such a conflict of principles for the international community, involving sovereignty, morality and human suffering, reached a crisis point in Liberia at the end of the 1980s. The United Nations and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) used the Liberian crisis to revise the established principle of non-intervention and permit the intervention staged by ECOWAS in 1990. They portrayed the Liberian case as a significant precedent that would justify their departure from the doctrine of non-interventionism and a new partnership between the UN and ECOWAS in the service of humanitarian intervention.; Against such intervention, this dissertation argues for the wisdom of the older concept of limited intervention. It does so through an analysis of the Liberian crisis and of a body of international law that includes the UN Charter, UN resolutions, ECOWAS treaties and protocols, International Court of Justice decisions, and principles of customary law. Contrary to the arguments advanced by the UN and ECOWAS, it argues that moral attitudes are peripheral to international law, which remains a creature of the state system. The legal instruments and principles of international law, it shows, do not, in fact, authorize intervention on humanitarian grounds. The second justification for the intervention in Liberia, that of protecting regional security, is also shown to be flawed. The regional security argument is belied by the role played by ECOWAS member states in supporting and financing armed groups and militias.; The dissertation further argues that the new regional approach advanced by ECOWAS and the UN falsely presumes that regional approaches to failed states in Africa are superior to wider multilateral efforts. While regional organizations such as ECOWAS present some advantages, partisan involvement and conflicting interests among member states limit the effectiveness of regional action. ECOWAS is not a coherent organization and coalitions composed of weak and fragmented states lack the capacity to take the level of action needed to solve humanitarian crises.