Legality and Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention

"Humanitarian intervention" has been a controversial topic in the international community. Some scholars believe that humanitarian intervention has legitimacy, as it can avoid extreme situations such as large-scale genocide, and can protect human rights and save lives. However, there are other scholars who have expressed some disagreement with them and question humanitarian intervention. They believe that the essence of humanitarian intervention is hegemonism, especially in the Kosovo and Iraq incidents, which use humanitarian intervention as an excuse for war. Although the United Nations has relevant regulations on humanitarian intervention, the binding force for superpowers is relatively lacking. In this condition, this article explores humanitarian intervention by consulting relevant literature and combining humanitarian intervention events, and analyzes the complexity of humanitarian intervention in the international community.