“Humanitarian intervention” has been controversial both when it happens, and when it has failed to happen.

• Rwanda in 1994 laid bare the full horror of inaction.
• Kosovo in 1999 raised major questions about the legitimacy of military intervention in a sovereign state.
• Bosnia in 1995 is another which has had a major impact on the contemporary policy debate about intervention for human protection purposes.
• Another was the failure and ultimate withdrawal of the UN peace operations in Somalia in 1992–93.

For some, the international community is not intervening enough; for others it is intervening much too often. For some, the only real issue is in ensuring that coercive interventions are effective; for others, questions about legality, process and the possible misuse of precedent loom much larger. For some, the new interventions herald a new world in which human rights trumps state sovereignty; for others, it ushers in a world in which big powers ride roughshod over the smaller ones, manipulating the rhetoric of humanitarianism and human rights. The controversy has laid bare basic divisions within the international community. In the interest of all those victims who suffer and die when leadership and institutions fail, it is crucial that these divisions be resolved.