Rethinking Humanitarian Interventions in the 21st Century examines the complex ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War. These 12 essays focus on the challenges associated with interventions, conflict and attendant human rights violations, unmitigated and systematic violence, state re-building, and issues associated with human mobility and dislocation. In a context where layers to conflict are so complex and fluid, it is difficult to imagine one book could ‘rethink interventions’ to the extent that is required. Nevertheless, a contribution to debates can b ... More

Rethinking Humanitarian Interventions in the 21st Century examines the complex ethics and politics of humanitarian intervention since the end of the Cold War. These 12 essays focus on the challenges associated with interventions, conflict and attendant human rights violations, unmitigated and systematic violence, state re-building, and issues associated with human mobility and dislocation. In a context where layers to conflict are so complex and fluid, it is difficult to imagine one book could ‘rethink interventions’ to the extent that is required. Nevertheless, a contribution to debates can be made. In this collection, important choices were made in terms of how to bring a collection together that allows for the richness as well as maintaining coherence. The task of ‘rethinking’ has meant many of the chapters are underpinned by critical theory with structures of power and the ends that they are deployed to serve never far from discussion. Overall, the chapters in this book address three central themes pertaining to the evolution of 1) humanitarian interventions in a global era; 2) the limits of sovereignty and the ethics of interventions; and the 3) politics of post-intervention (re-)building and humanitarian engagement. As such, they provide a valuable contribution to academics, students, instructors and intellectual communities engaged in research pertaining to humanitarianism, conflict and interventions and different conceptions of security and international relations, and who agree that the present challenges require a basic rethinking of interventions.