Summary of ‘Humanitarianism, genocide and liberalism’, of Michelle Tusan

Genocide in the early 1940s resulted in the emergence of human rights regimes,
but recent studies remind us that international response to violence has a longer story.
They have a particularly importance nowadays, when the doctrine of reponsibility to
protect gained legitimacy.
Concerns over violating sovereignty have been suplanted by a doctrine of rights
of the victim communities and individuals, specially because it became a moral
obligation. Studying the history of the response to atrocity and genocide can help to
understand this new point of view. Humanitarianism, by the way, is na ideology that gains
force today and it brings response of people and governments to situations of violation of
human rights. Nonetheless, intervention in conflict on humanitarian basis dates back to
early modern Europe, pointing to the Treaty of Westphalia. Opposed to this kind of
researches, some authors focus on diferent roots of intervention and its origins, away from
Europe.
Religion was the primary factor in determining the groups that demanded
protection, as did England with protestant in other lands during the sixteenth century, for
instance. Intervention during these days was, to a large extent, related to groups, not a
feeling of ‘common humanity’. Time changed it, as these actions became more associated
to the result of the balance of power in Europe, as happened when a moral foundation led
to protection of minorities from Ottoman tyranny. This point of view also motivated
civilizing missions in Africa, during the imperialist campaigns in the nineteenth century.
Even so, there has never been a consensus among authors on how,when and
whether to intervene to stop violations in humanitarian protection. Over the history, the
answer to these questions came from decisions of states and non-state actors. British and
the United States, for example, were crucial to determinate the course of the campaign to
end slavery.
New studies about slavery have a new interest and perspective owing to a broader
look in history, apart from the US. They view the past and presente humanitarian response
to slavery as crucial to understand modern day human rights regime. For Blackburn, the
rise of colonialism and capitalism is important to explain when slavery was undone and
argues that human rights regimes came out of anti-slavery movements, while anew
humanitarian sensibility appeared. For another author, Britain was the star of the
international abolition movement, with its tribunals and abolition in 1807, while other
studies see many motivations that British had in advancing, pointing to imperial ones and
political discourse. Other studies see slavery as na urgent contemporary issue, not solved
yet, focusing on the new ways of labour systems.
Colonialism and anti-slavery were compatible in the ninteenth century, because
the claims against slavery were seen as demonstration of Europe as part of the civilized
world. Having said that, studies conclude that the West has read and reread slavey
historically according to its own geopolitical priorities and they use this conclusion to
challenge current thinking about the relationship between humanitarianism and human
rights discourse and practice.
 Historically, humanitarianism has held na important place in foreign policy
concerns, as interventions in the internal affairs of other states was related to humanitarian
grounds in the early modern past. Genocide is always studied as an example to understand
the role of humanitarianism during interventions of states, relating it to the role of
powerful states imperial interests. This point generate critics over humanitarian
interventions today. While some authors see intervention as necessary and argue that
influence of people in their governments is determinating for it to occur, other ones create
the debate about the problems interventions make, as its decisions are taken by one only
decision maker, the West.