No Easy Fix

Compare retailer offers

About this product

The UN has adopted a "responsibility to protect" mandate for humanitarian intervention in civil wars - but there is no institutional basis for carrying out that mandate. Patricia Marchak argues that unless would-be interveners have an understanding of local issues, agents who speak local languages, and a military force fully prepared to undertake both peaceful and military missions on short notice, UN and other attempts to intervene are unlikely to succeed. While UN-sponsored international criminal courts have been successful in obliging leaders to accept responsibility for their actions during bitter internal wars, Marchak argues that they may not be the best means of bringing truth and reconciliation to survivors. Based on the principle of individual responsibility, they are not designed to deal with collective crimes against humanity and genocide, nor are they good instruments for dealing with the breakdown of societies. Bringing together her own field interviews, documentary material, and secondary sources, Marchak critically assesses the recent history of international interventions and criminal prosecutions. She examines three cases in detail: Cambodia, Rwanda, and the former

More from McGill-Queen's University Press