Abstract (eng)
This thesis puts forward a rights-based theory of the permissibility of AHI, which argues that permissibility varies along a sliding scale: it declines in probability as one moves through the three forms of AHI – humanitarian assistance, military rescue, and transformative occupation. In my argument, I first demonstrate that AHI is not impermissible in principle by refuting the three main principled objections to it. Second, I show that the permissibility of any AHI is determined by three factors - its implications for international peace and stability, its impact on the enjoyment of the right of political communities to collective self-determination, and its performance under the traditional jus ad bellum criteria of Just War. On the basis of these determinants, clear-cut conditions for permissibility are developed. Third, I demonstrate that it is possible to distinguish three forms of AHI – humanitarian assistance, military rescue, and transformative occupation. Fourth, I show that each of the three forms of AHI tends to fare differently under the conditions for permissibility, in fact, permissibility tends to become less probable as one moves through these three forms. Three case studies – Bosnia (1993), Libya (2011), and Iraq (2003) – are examined in order to illustrate how the theory is to be applied in practice.