Rwanda and the Moral Obligation of Humanitarian Intervention

Why the international community should have intervened in Rwanda. The Rwandan Genocide was a genocidal mass slaughter of ethnic Tutsis by ethnic Hutus that took place in 1994. 20 years on, Kassner contends that the violation of the basic human rights of the Rwandan Tutsis morally obliged the international community to intervene militarily to stop the genocide. This compelling argument, grounded in basic rights, runs counter to the accepted view on the moral nature of humanitarian intervention. It is a new approach to the intersection of human and sovereign rights that is of tremendous moral, political and legal importance to theorists working in international relations today. It challenges the immutability of the right of non-intervention held by sovereign states, assessing when it becomes right for the international community to intervene militarily in order to avoid another Rwanda.