Applicability of International Humanitarian Law in Iraq -2003

Abstract

War is a phenomenon of organized collective violence that affects either the relations between two or more societies or power relations within a society. In early 2003, the United States claimed that it had proof and evidence that Iraq was hoarding chemicals of mass destruction. The American president George W Bush warned the world at large of an impending war unless it got rid of 100% of the weapons of mass destruction believed to be in the country. The inspections done by United Nation's experts did not reveal the presence of such weapons, but still America was not satisfied. Further justification included the naked aggression against its Kuwaiti neighbor by Iraq in 1999, its efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction, its record of having used such weapons, security council action under chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, and continuing Iraqi defiance of the councils requirements. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. It is easy to forget the wanton cruelty ofIraq's invasion, which was unprovoked, and the horror with which the world received news of it. That invasion rightly shaped, forever after, the way the world would look at Sadaam Hussein's Iraq' Another argument justifying the 2003 war was the legality based on humanitarian intervention. Saddam Hussein and his Baath party fitted the stereotype of the dictatorial leader of a tyrannical and totalitarian regime'. The Human Rights situation in Iraq had been poor for decades. The Human Rights situation in Iraq was addressed by the governments of the United Kingdom and United