Humanitarian intervention, the right to protect: a case study of Somalia

Abstract

Somalia is known for its anarchy and dysfunction. With the absence of government, security and rule of law, it has been left to its own devices and has been consumed by violence and civil unrest. Somalia’s failing state has not only created a humanitarian disaster for its citizens, but also threatens the national security and geostrategic interests of its neighbors; Kenya, Ethiopia and other countries in the Horn of Africa. In October of 2011, the Kenyan government launched “Operation Linda Nchi” (Protect the Country), an armed intervention in Somalia to counter the growing terrorist threat and impart stability and governance to safeguard its security and other strategic interests. The Kenyan government is poised to construct a deep water port at Lamu, near the Somalia border to serve as the terminus of new oil pipelines to South Sudan through Uganda. Such vast investment requires much tighter control over the region. Tourism is critical to Kenya and hence a stable Somalia is in its strategic priority. In this connection therefore, Kenya’s first mission is to keep Al-Shabaab at arm’s length from its border and to achieve this, it is determined to carve out a buffer zone inside Somalia i.e. Jubbaland. The study seeks to also discuss the concernsand dilemmas that arise from armed interventions by analyzing just war theory to measure the morality of Kenya’s decision to intervene in Somalia. The study also examines the previous UN and US intervention in the early 1990s as a means of understanding the relevant issues and concerns that the US and the UN faced and relating those experiences to the current intervention led by Kenya. The inclusion of the freedom of expression in the pantheon of self-defence is broadly consistent with the moral, legal, and consequentialist arguments in favor of the international norm of right to protect.