The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention. Concepts and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
25.-27.11.2012, Historisches Kolleg München
The issue of „humanitarian intervention“ stands, especially given NATO’s recent involvement in the civil war in Libya, high on the agenda of international politics. Since the end of the Cold War this kind of intervention has established itself in the sphere of international diplomacy. Starting from the creation of safe havens for Kurdish refugees in Iraq in 1991 and following the UN interventions in Somalia and former Yugoslavia in 1992 one key question has, repeatedly been raised and controversially discussed: is it legitimate to protect humanitarian norms and universal human rights by military force?
Scholars of international law and political science have already discussed this issue at some length, mainly focusing on the cases of intervention in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The aim of the annual meeting of the Arbeitskreis Historische Friedensforschung is to historicize the phenomena of enforcing humanitarian norms by military means. Historians will discuss this topic in a broader interdisciplinary dialogue with legal scholars,philosophers and political scientists. Apart from case studies relating to the twentieth century, the conference will also focus explicitly on developments in the nineteenth century in order to investigate the historical origins of humanitarian intervention and to link the experiences of two centuries of „enforcing humanity“.
The conference was organised by Dr. Fabian Klose and realized by the generous funding of the German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF), and the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the History Department of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. For a detailed report on the conference see H-Soz-Kult.
Fotocredit: By HoCComms [Public domain, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
Programme
Introduction
Fabian Klose (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich) / Holger Nehring (University of Sheffield)
Keynote Lecture
Michael Geyer (University of Chicago), Humanitarianism and Human Rights: A Troubled Rapport
Panel I: The Legal Discourse on Humanitarian Intervention and the Role of the Public Option in the 18th Century
Christa Hämmerle (University of Vienna), Chair
Daniel Marc Segesser (University of Berne), Humanitarian Intervention and the Issue of State Sovereignty in the Discourse of Legal Experts of the Second Half of the 19th Century
Stefan Kroll (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity Göttingen), Intervention and Justification
Jon Western (Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley), Prudence or Outrage? Public Opinion and Influence on Humanitarian Intervention in Historical and Comparative Perspective
Martin Aust (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich), Commentary
Public Panel Discussion
„Protecting Human Rights by Force? Military and Political Perspectives in the 21st Century“
Joachim Käppner (Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich), Corinna Hauswedell (Director of Conflict Analysis and Dialogue (CoAD), Bonn), Lawrence Moss (Human Rights Watch, New York), Ulf Häußler (German Federal Ministry of Defence, Berlin)
Panel II: Humanitarian Intervention in the 19th Century. Part I: Fighting the Slave Trade
Fabian Klose (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich), Enforcing Abolition: The Congress of Vienna and the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention
Bronwen Everill (Warwick University), Colonial Anti-Slavery and Humanitarian Intervention: Sierra Leone and Liberia from 1821-1861
Mairi MacDonald (University of Toronto), Colonial Rule as Humanitarian Intervention: The Brussels Conference relative to the African Slave Trade 1890
Jost Dülffer (University of Cologne), Chair and Commentary
Panel III: Humanitarian Intervention in the 19th Century. Part II: Protecting Religious and Ethnic Minority Groups
Tobias Grill (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich), Chair
Davide Rodogno (Graduate Institute Geneva), Interventions in the Ottoman Empire
Abigail Green (Brasenose College Oxford), Patterns of Intervention: the Jewish Question as an International Problem in the 19th Century
Brendan Simms (University of Cambridge), Commentary
Panel IV: Humanitarian Intervention in the Interwar Period
Martin Geyer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich), Chair
Daniel Maul (University of Gießen), Questions of War and Peace: Quaker Relief and the Problem of Humanitarian Intervention 1870 to 1945
Jost Dülffer (University of Cologne), Humanitarian Intervention as Legitimation – the German Case 1937/1940
Claudia Kemper (Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg), Commentary
Panel V: Humanitarian Intervention during the Cold War
Fabian Klose (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich), Chair
Jan Erik Schulte (Hannah-Arendt-Institut Dresden), From the Protection of Sovereignty to Humanitarian Intervention? Traditions and Developments of United Nations Peacekeeping in the 20th Century
Norrie MacQueen (University of St. Andrews), Cold War Peacekeeping versus Humanitarian Intervention: Beyond the Hammarskjoldian Model
Gottfried Niedhart (University of Mannheim), Humanitarian Catastrophies and the Problem of Intervention in the East-West Conflict: from Hungary 1956 to Helsinki 1975
Patrick Merziger (University of Gießen), Civil-Military Cooperation in Humanitarian Missions of the Federal Republic of Germany 1960-1992
Holger Nehring (University of Sheffield), Commentary
Panel VI: A New Century of Humanitarian Intervention?
Corinna Hauswedell (Director of Conflict Analysis and Dialogue (CoAD), Bonn), Chair
Eric J. Morgan (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), From Intervention to Non-Intervention: The United States and the Rwandan Genocide
Bradley Simpson (Princeton University), Realpolitik Praxis in Humanitarian Garb: The International Community’s Intervention in East Timor in 1999
Manuel Fröhlich (University of Jena), The Responsibility to Protect as Normative Change: The Case of Libya
Marie-Janine Calic (Ludwig-Maximilians Universität Munich), •Commentary
Final Commentary
Andrew Thompson (University of Exeter
