Rights-protecting interventionism beyond the use of military force

The objective of this project is to investigate how states should respond to human rights violations in other states. While failure to protect human rights is most visible in cases involving the worst kinds of rights violations, such as genocide or crimes against humanity, most human rights violations do not take this form. The majority of human rights violations are instead violations of political, economic, social and cultural rights. Failure to protect such rights not only applies to autocratic and poor states, but also to rich liberal states, albeit to a lesser extent. Given the lack of effective supra state enforcement mechanisms, it is important to ask what other states may and must do in response to such rights violations. The project develops a normative theory of international intervention for the protection of human rights. The objective during the first phase of the project is to map the normatively relevant concerns that should weigh on our assessment of interventions and to examine how these concerns should be weighed against each other. From debates about intervention, it is clear that a key question is how concern for national self-determination and sovereignty should be weighed against the potential benefit of preventing human rights violations. The project investigates how these seemingly opposing concerns can be reconciled and develops a novel account that shows how self-determination can be respected without discounting the importance of protecting human rights. The project also investigates what good and bad effects should be counted in proportionality assessments, and whether a state being democratic provides it with special protection against intervention. The second phase of the project applies the theoretical framework developed during the first phase in order to conduct normative analyses of questions such as: How and how often should intervention to protect human rights take place? And, who should be responsible for carrying out the interventions? In this phase of the project, it is also investigated how opportunity costs should matter for the permissibility of intervention. In addition, the project investigates whether it is plausible that the permissibility of intervention should be determined by a threshold approach (as is common) or whether it is more plausible that permissibility should be determined by a continuum approach according to which intervention can also be permissible in response to minor rights violations, provided the intervention is proportionate and necessary. The project argues that the latter option is more plausible. The project has contributed to the following results and findings (selected): - A new theoretical framework for how to understand self-determination as an objection to intervention. The framework focuses on individuals’ right to influence and how this, adjusted for responsibility for rights violations, should be weighted in proportionality assessments. - A new theory about the effects that should be counted in proportionality assessments. Contrary to common views, it is shown that all positive and negative effects, even the seemingly trivial, should count towards proportionality. This matters because it helps determine which interventions should take place. - A novel understanding of the argument that democracies have a special protection against intervention. - An improved understanding of the criteria that should determine the permissibility of interventions, with special emphasis on how these pertain to non-military interventions. Work on this project has been carried out with support from the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) at the University of Manchester and the political theory group at the Department of political science, University of Oslo.

Prosjektets virkninger: prosjektdeltaker har fått utviklet sin kompetanse og muligheter for å kunne oppnå en akademisk toppstilling, noe som er formålet med postdoktorstillinger. Prosjektets resultater vil kunne anvendes til politikkutforming i Norge og utland. Spesielt gjelder dette hvilke kriterier som bør legges til grunn i politiske beslutninger som omhandler hvordan stater bør forholde seg til rettighetsbrudd i andre stater. Prosjektets effekter: prosjektet har bidratt til økt internasjonalt forskningssamarbeid innenfor feltet politisk teori, spesielt mellom Norge og Storbritannia og Norge og USA. Prosjektets resultater forventes også å bidra til at forskningsfronten på feltet utvikles.

This project investigates how states should respond to human rights violations in other states. Existing research has established the permissibility of military responses to genocide and crimes against humanity, but has mostly ignored how states should respond other rights violations, using means short of military force. To fill this gap this three-year project sees the investigator employ normative analysis to examine a novel view called Rights-Protecting Interventionism (RPI). RPI follows from a commitment to global justice and human rights, and says that external intervention is, in principle, morally permitted whenever human rights are violated by a state. RPI recognizes that there are different ways of intervening, and maintains that interventions are permissible so long as they are not disproportionately coercive. The project proceeds in two stages, evenly split in terms of time: The first step identifies the most plausible version of RPI. The second step focuses on normative guidance, investigating factors that speak against RPI, such as practical implementation, tolerance and self-determination, and epistemic uncertainty and humility, before considering if and how RPI should be applied. The project will offer normative conclusions about what states seeking to adopt an ethical foreign policy may and must do in order to protect human rights in other states, providing new knowledge of the nature and limits of external enforcement of rights in international politics.