Does a Commitment to Protecting Human Rights Permit us to Wage War?

This paper will look at how humanitarian intervention and the concept of a just war might match up with a duty to intervene to protect human rights. There is a clear conflict within these two concepts- if we militarily intervene to protect one person’s (or set of persons) human rights then we are almost certainly going to end up stripping someone else of their human rights, by sanctioning violence against them. There are two possible lines of argument- the first is that commitment to human rights necessitates a commitment to pacifism that is, we cannot deprive another human being of their human rights- even to protect a third party’s rights. The second is that a commitment to human rights commits us to a strong interventionist principle in order to protect the rights of the deprived. Both of these principles have a strong prima facie validity based upon the need to protect human rights- one says we cannot violate anyone’s rights, the other says we can violate someone’s rights if it will ensure the protection of the rights of a third party. The argument in favour of the former is largely a deontological one- we cannot perform the acts associated with war because they are morally wrong to do so. The arguments in favour of the latter position are much more consequentialist- we need to protect the rights of the weak (and preferably of as many people as possible) and so the violation of a small number of violent individuals’ rights is justified by the overall amelioration of human rights. The arguments against the former position are simple- if we genuinely care about human rights then we must be willing to act in order to protect them and it is an unfortunate reality that sometimes this might require resorting to the use of violence. The argument against the latter is also reasonably simple- if we are genuinely committed to human rights then we are committed to the rights of all humans, not just those who are not violent. I will argue that this conflict can be resolved by accepting that in reality it is a bit of both. The principle we should use to decide whether we can intervene is what I shall call the egregiousness principle. This principle is similar to the just war concept of proportionality. Proportionality says that any response to aggression must be proportionate- so I cannot respond to your punching me by shooting you in the head. I will argue that we can only use violence to protect human rights in the case of egregious and deliberate violations. Isolated cases of political violence do not suffice. There must be widespread and deliberate violation of the most basic human rights. In this way we can remain committed to protecting the human rights of all, whilst also being willing to do what is necessary to protect the rights of the deprived.