Humanitarian Intervention and Burden-Sharing Justice
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321719882607 |
| Author | Fredrik D Hjorthen |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2019
Article
Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(4) 936 –953
Humanitarian Intervention
© The Author(s) 2019
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and Burden-Sharing Justice
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321719882607
DOI: 10.1177/0032321719882607
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Fredrik D Hjorthen
Abstract
This article examines the case for distributive fairness among states in the context of humanitarian
intervention. I start by arguing that distributive fairness among interveners is important for both
intrinsic and instrumental reasons. I then discuss the worry that due to the nature of humanitarian
intervention, fair burden sharing is difficult to achieve without compromising the operational
effectiveness of interventions. I examine three responses that while they reduce the severity of
this objection do not fully override it. Finally, in light of the objection I explore options for practical
changes and institutional reform that could contribute to reconciling fair burden sharing with
effective intervention. I conclude that fairness and effectiveness can be reconciled in the longer
term by fully institutionalising humanitarian intervention and in the short term by distinguishing
between the duty to undertake intervention and the duty to pay for it.
Keywords
duty to intervene, international justice, humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect,
distributive fairness
Accepted: 24 September 2019
Introduction
The debate on military humanitarian intervention has over the past decade-and-a-half
been concerned with the notion of a duty to intervene (see, for example, Bagnoli, 2006;
Caney, 2005; Fabre, 2012; Pattison, 2010; Tan, 2006; Tesón, 2005).1 Theorists disagree
about the scope and grounding of this duty, but it is now widely, if not universally,
accepted that there is a duty to intervene to protect people in other countries from egre-
gious violations of their human rights. In international relations, this idea is captured by
the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which was endorsed by all UN member states in
2005.2 Far less attention has been devoted to the more specific – and highly important –
question of how the duty to intervene ought to be assigned to particular agents, or what
we may call the duty specification question (Pattison, 2010: 2).3
Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Corresponding author:
Fredrik D Hjorthen, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Box 1097, Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway.
Email: f.d.hjorthen@stv.uio.no
Hjorthen
937
When answering the duty specification question, there are at least two important
desiderata. On the one hand, the duty should be assigned in a way that ensures that the
intervention is effective. On the other hand, the duty should be fairly distributed between
duty bearers. These two desiderata are usefully captured by Simon Caney’s distinction
between Harm Avoidance Justice and Burden-Sharing Justice. Harm Avoidance Justice
‘takes as its point of departure the imperative to prevent [harm], and works back from this
to deduce who should do what. Its focus is primarily on ensuring that the catastrophe is
averted (or at least minimised within reason)’. Burden-Sharing Justice, meanwhile,
focuses on ‘how the burden of combating the problem should be shared fairly among the
duty-bearers’ (Caney, 2014: 125–126). A harm may be prevented in several different
ways, with each yielding a different set (or distribution) of burdens. Caney’s idea is that
if we are more focused on achieving the goal effectively, then we are taking a Harm
Avoidance Justice perspective. If we are more focused on the distribution being fair, then
we are taking a Burden-Sharing Justice perspective.
In the emerging literature on the duty specification question, it is fair to say that the
dominant approach has been one of Harm Avoidance Justice. Little attention has been
devoted to distributive fairness among potential interveners.4 For example, James
Pattison, in his major work on the duty specification question, devotes less than three
pages to the question of fairness and burden sharing (Pattison, 2010: 196–199). Others,
such as Caney (2005), Erskine (2014), Fabre (2012), Ralph and Souter (2015) and Tan
(1995, 2006, 2015), have also touched on the question of how the duties of intervention
should be assigned, but they are similar to Pattison in that they pay little attention to dis-
tributive fairness among interveners. In this article, I will argue that the relative neglect
of Burden-Sharing Justice is mistaken, and I will start out by exploring the case for fair
burden sharing for humanitarian intervention.5 However, a natural worry is that it would
be difficult to achieve fair burden sharing without compromising the effective operation
of interventions. This is because fair burden sharing seems to require that the duty be
shared among a large number of agents, something that would lead to coordination prob-
lems and harm operational effectiveness. In the second part of the article, I discuss this
worry and suggest three ways through which the effectiveness objection can be met.
Although these responses reduce the scope and force of the objection, the effectiveness
objection retains some bite. This leads to the question of how the institutions and prac-
tices of humanitarian intervention may be reformed to facilitate both effective interven-
tions and fair burden sharing.
In the final part of the article, I examine three practical approaches to how fair burden
sharing and effective intervention can be reconciled more fully. Specifically, I argue that,
in the longer term, we could fully reconcile effectiveness and distributive fairness by
institutionalising humanitarian intervention. This is because institutionalisation would
make it possible to divide the burden in a way that lends itself more easily to distribution
among states. I also argue that, in the short term, we could reconcile effectiveness and
distributive fairness by individuating the burdens of intervention more closely.
Thus, I defend two main claims: that Burden-Sharing Justice should play an important
role for how the duty to intervene is assigned, and that this has important consequences
for how we ought to specify the duties of humanitarian intervention in practice.
Two clarifications are in order before I proceed. First, it matters for the relevance of
the duty specification question whether we think of the duty to intervene as a perfect or
imperfect duty, that is, whether it is a duty of justice or a duty of beneficence. Generally
speaking, imperfect duties of beneficence are duties that we cannot be compelled to
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Political Studies 68(4)
perform and where no performer is specified (Bagnoli, 2006; Gomes, 2011: 1062; Nardin,
2006). To the extent that the duty to intervene is such a duty, the duty specification ques-
tion will not arise. The duty to intervene would be assigned to everyone in general and not
to anyone in particular. In this article, I will assume that the duty to intervene is a duty of
justice, that is, one that agents can be compelled to perform.6 As Gomes (2011: 1064) puts
it, ‘Humanitarian intervention should [. . .] be recognised as a perfect duty that we could
be required, even coerced, to perform’. The duty specification question arises when the
duty to protect human rights, which all agents can be compelled to perform, is to be trans-
lated into a more specific duty to undertake military humanitarian intervention and its
task is to answer which desiderata should be applied so that the correct agents are picked
out as the appropriate holders of this duty. To what extent distributive fairness should play
a role in this process is the topic of this article.
Second, throughout the article I will focus on states as the bearers of the duty to
intervene. This follows a trend in the literature but should be seen as a simplifying
assumption. A full account would consider other agents as well, and I submit that the
duties to protect the rights of others (which ground the duty to intervene) ultimately
attach to individuals. However, the assumption made here is reasonable seeing as states
are individuals’ main ‘instrument for justice’ when it comes to obligations in the inter-
national arena (Buchanan, 1999: 82–87). Hence, I acknowledge the important instru-
mental role of states while also retaining an individualist perspective regarding the
ultimate site of rights and responsibilities.
The Importance of Distributive Fairness for Humanitarian
Intervention and the Effectiveness Objection
The duty to intervene entails a moral requirement that duty bearers carry the costs of
intervention. Being morally required to bear these costs comes with demands for distribu-
tive fairness. This is so for both intrinsic and instrumental reasons. The claim that fairness
is intrinsically important must ultimately be grounded in more fundamental principles
(e.g. equal respect or concern for the legitimate entitlements of the citizens of intervening
states). But given that there is a duty to intervene, and that the burden of acting on this
duty must be borne by someone, there is a strong prima facie case for distributing it fairly.
The instrumental argument for caring about distributive fairness for humanitarian inter-
vention relates to the claim that distributing the burdens of intervention fairly...
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