Humanitarian Intervention and Fledgling Democracies

This essay discusses the lawfulness of humanitarian intervention in circumstances in which the lives of large numbers of a population are in danger and such government as is there is either non-existent, ineffective, or itself the threat to basic human rights. If the great democracies back up their insistence on respect for constitutional democracy in all other states with a claim of a customary right to unilateral humanitarian intervention for its violation, that norm, in itself, will act to deter coups.