Traditional Principle of Humanitarian Intervention Cope

Sovereign states are expected to as guardians of their citizens security. But what happens if state behaves as criminals towards their own people, treating sovereignty as a licence to kill ?. Should tyrannical states be recognised as a legitimate member of international society and accorded by the non intervention principle, or should state forfeit their sovereign rights and be exposed to legitimate intervention if they actively abuse or fail to protect their citizens” . {Alex J Bellamy and Nicolas J Weeler, Humanitarian Intervention in world politics} .As a result of the frequency and intensity of complex emergencies and also natural disasters for the past two decade has lead to the rapid transformation in the policy and the institutional context of humanitarianism. Initially humanitarian was covered with a narrow set of basic relief activities and carry out by small group of independent actors, has now expanded significantly to an ever widening and much more complex range of rehabilitation work.

The Rwandan genocide, finally forced humanitarian agencies to think beyond traditional relief assistance that was based on the delivery of food, shelter , basic heath care and take a deeper reflection on how they actually perceived their own role and responsibility as to how they can be accountable in the humanitarian field. It is now clear that there are principle which are to be followed by non governmental organisation in the humanitarian sphere that they are to operate with, especially when it comes to its usefulness in addressing the complex and political conditions that surrounds emergency situation.Humanitarian assistance has been a highly political activity, it also involves in engaging authorities in conflict affected countries or relying on donor for financial support and that all can be politically motivated. It is also nowadays evident that relief organisation seem to remain even less in control of their working environment due to expanding peacekeeping and military led action.

In there action they are confronted with scale of human rights abuses and also the targeting of civilian and humanitarian workers.However the necessity to interact with armed groups started to blur the line between military policies and relief mission, making humanitarian action appear to be increasingly tied to the overall political response of donor countries to complex emergencies. It is a moral obligation for humanitarian workers to provide aid where ever it may be needed and the alleviation of suffering in humanitarian crisis is supposed to be the basic motivation in this context.In the area of professionalism the humanitarian workers act to ensure that their action confer no military advantage and that they are driven solely on the basis of need, the humanitarian principle of neutrality and impartiality are respected as far as their operation is concern. What I have been sensing is that in many current wars belligerent rejects the notion or idea that war has limit and attack on civilian and other abuses of International Humanitarian Law is part of a deliberate strategy, and this have led to the question whether this ethical thing is still achievable in practice. .

2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM What has become an issue for the international community is that since the end of the cold war there has been an increase in occurrence of natural and man made disasters, including armed conflicts. This situation of humanitarian emergencies have led to a huge lose of life, damage to property and the long term destruction. In addition to this there are also instances in which disaster have forced countries to postpone national development programmes.It is clear that every single emergency is accompanied by a high amount of human casualities, with over one million five hundred people been killed by natural disaster in the past decades.

According to {UNDP report 2004: 1-8} drought affects some two hundred and twenty million people , flooding one hundred and ninty six million people, cyclones one hundred and nineteen million people and over one hundred and thirty million people live in earthquake risk zone. This is an indicator that there is still an existing problem in the humanitarian sphere.On the other hand due to better satellite forcasting, improved early warning system and also improved community preparedness in some countries such as India and Bangladesh the potential for natural disaster is reduced because they have put up proactive measures in other to prevent to much causuality . Although natural disaster like floods, droughts, volcanic eruption, wild fires, earthquake and tsunami exist in both developed and developing countries, the poorest and most maginalised urban and rural societies will be list likely to recover livelihoods and rebuild assets quickly.

There are several reasons for this weak coping capacity, which puts large population of the poorest inhabitants at risk for example, the flooding of the Yantze river in china 1998, which displaced over two hundred million people has been officially blamed on deforestation in the highlands of Sichuan by the Chinese government. The typhoon that swept across southern Africa in 2000, producing flooding displaced millions especially in Mozambique and Madagascar, trigged destruction that was excersabated by land use changes and deforestation.In the area of complex emergencie, deformed and failed processes ofo modernisation and transformation in some regions of the world have caused a fundamental development crisis. Complex emergencies and to a lesser degree natural disaster have a large impact on countries and people, like hyperinflation, massive unemployment, people face episodic food insecurity, and this frequently deteriorates into mass starvation, followed by movement of displaced people and refugees escaping conflict or searching for food.The lack of knowledge or at least the lack of competent action, has resulted in a visible increase of hazards, which are influence by human activities so in this line the preventive measures use in these risk zone are insufficient so there must be possible proactive measures like land use planning, approite building codes, safety regulations,civic education on land policies and the challenge of environmental exploitation and response plans. I really want to campaign for the better use of the global commons that is the land, river, forest and the natural environment.