Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms, Strategic Framing, and Intervention

This book seeks to examine the effects of strategic framing in U.S. and UN policy arenas to draw conclusions regarding whether and how the human rights and humanitarian norms embedded within such frames resonated with decision-makers and, in turn, how they shaped variation in levels of political will concerning humanitarian intervention in three cases,Somalia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

Melissa Labonte is assistant professor of political science at Fordham University.

Introduction 1. Contemporary humanitarian intervention in theory and practice 2. Making a good argument and mobilizing political will 3. Human intervention in Somalia 4. Failure to intervene in Rwanda 5. Mixed intervention in Sierra Leone 6. Strategic framing, norms, and civilian protection: can R2P succeed where humanitarian intervention has failed?