| Humanitarian intervention for this paper is the use of force in order to prevent grave violation of human rights which endangered the peace and security of the international community. The categories of human right violation which may raise the right to use of force are genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The existence of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention had pre-dated even before UN Charter is enacted. However, after the enactment of UN Charter, such ability had been vested to the Security Council. Notwithstanding to such great it often show its inability to mitigate threat to the peace and security of the international community. Said precedent had encouraged a further development on the state practice, and subsequently constitute customary international law. In this paper, we will also see that states often conduct a unilateral use of force without the approval of the Security Council but received endorsement from the Security Council after the intervention. In conclusion, it is submitted that there is customary international law on the use of force to curtail humanitarian catastrophe. Moreover, within this paper it is also submitted that there are certain criteria to assess whether or not a use of force is lawful. The proposed criteria are based on the collaboration between the Responsibility to protect by ICISS and the report of UN High level panel on threat, challenges and changes. The criteria are: the nature of human rights violation, proper purpose of intervention, last resort, proportional means, and balance of consequences. |