MONTREAL/January 21, 2005—
Peace and Conflict Resolution Web Site
As part of the ongoing Peace and Conflict Resolution series, Concordia University will present Humanitarian Intervention and Reconstruction: Collateral Benefit, presented by Michael Blake, professor of public policy and philosophy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The event will take place on Monday, January 24th at 10:30 a.m., in the J.A. deSève Cinema in the J.W. McConnell Building (1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West).
Today, many questions are raised regarding humanitarian intervention. Should outside powers have intervened militarily to stop gross violations of human rights in Kosovo in 1999? In Rwanda in 1994? In Somalia in 1993? More recently, some have suggested that the 2003 U.S.-led intervention into Iraq might be justified as a species of humanitarian intervention, or at least as a closely related type of venture. The deployment of the humanitarian intervention precedent has done little, however, to diminish dispute over that initiative.
Professor Blake will address difficult questions relating to humanitarian intervention, drawing on his forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press, The Politics of Survival. Among them, “What exactly is (and is not) a humanitarian intervention?”, “When (if ever) is such intervention legitimate or defensible?”, and “If it is ever legitimate or defensible, what form should intervention take?” have emerged as some of the most important and disputed questions of international relations at the turn of the twenty-first century.
The decisions to intervene, or, in the case of Rwanda, not to intervene, have each proved enormously controversial. Powerful arguments continue to be deployed both for and against the practice of humanitarian intervention, and despite Canada’s spearheading of an International Commission on Intervention and Sovereignty at the United Nations, no clear consensus on the question has emerged. As the Commission itself observed, however, the practice of humanitarian intervention, should it continue as it has been practiced in the last decade, threatens to transform the core of the international legal order that emerged after the Second World War, and potentially to de-stabilize it.
Blake’s research focuses on social and political philosophy, with an emphasis on the relationship between social justice and group membership. He is currently writing a book on multicultural politics titled The Politics of Survival: Liberalism, Tolerance, and Multiculturalism. He has also published work on international distributive justice, international criminal adjudication, and immigration.
For more information about this lecture contact Dr. Avery Plaw of the Political Science Department at (514) 848-2424 ext. 2133, or at aplaw@alcor.concordia.ca. For updates on the Peace and Conflict Resolution series, please contact Laurie Lamoureux-Scholes at peace@alcor.concordia.ca.
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Source :
Tanya Churchmuch
Senior Media Relations Advisor
Concordia University
