primary aim , and conducted along humanitarian lines ( Caney , 2005 : 230 ).
Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter , governing issues of war and aggression , does not directly address humanitarian intervention . It does , however , provide some space for international action deemed “ necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security ” ( United Nations , 1945 ). Since 2005 the international community has gone further by establishing a ‘ Responsibility to Protect ’, at least in principle , in cases of humanitarian crises ( UN Office on Genocide Prevention ). The moral implications of international law on this issue are contested . Some argue that following the stipulations of international law is a moral duty greater than the particular demands of a humanitarian crisis . This position is known as ‘ legal positivism ’ ( Holzgrefe , 2003 : 35 ). Legal arguments for non-intervention were developed further into the ‘ legalist paradigm ’ by Michael Walzer ( 2015 : 51-64 ).
Legalist arguments on their
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158 own are not convincing . Historically , law has very often been out of step with the demands of morality . One could simply argue that the moral requirement to intervene in cases of humanitarian crisis includes a duty to reform international law . Buchanan ( 2003 : 130-132 ) notes that a number of successful humanitarian interventions have been carried out outside the realms of international law : in Kosovo , in Bangladesh , and in Cambodia . It seems deeply problematic to claim that morality should always succumb to legal standards even when the latter might lead us , as Tesón argues , to a “ second-best solution ” ( 2014 : 61 ). Legal principles of nonintervention are tied up with a philosophy of the nation-state which may be an anachronistic model for the crises of the twenty-first century . Luban ( 1980 : 173 ) importantly notes that contemporary humanitarian crises arise from conflicts “ provoked largely by the noncongruence of nation and state ”. Others do raise concerns that prioritising a new morality of humanitarian intervention would require