Nili's Criticism Of Humanitarian Intervention

In his article, ‘Humanitarian Disintervention’, Nili (2011) presents a deontological argument on the primary significance of ‘negative’ duties during humanitarian crises. Using Pogge’s rationalisation of negative duties and Wenar’s legal framework, Nili argues that affluent liberal democracies and their citizens are accountable for international human rights violations as they breach their negative duty “not to harm” by indirectly sustaining oppressive regimes (pp.33-34). Nili suggests that liberal democracies confer “trading privileges” upon oppressive regimes through resource purchases which accordingly transfers resource rights from unconsenting citizens to authoritarian leaders; these leaders then use their gained wealth and power to prolong their brutal regimes (pp.33-38). Nili contends that liberal democracies’ negative duties thus include economically disengaging with oppressive regimes through boycotting and …show more content…
Nili’s assertion that assessments of ethical duty should consider structural causality is compelling. Nili rightly points out the illogicality of pursuing humanitarian intervention whilst simultaneously trading with regimes that commit human rights violations (p.39). He uses several fitting examples to illustrate the links between illegitimate trading and human rights violations (p.37). Nili further demonstrates the success of ‘disintervention’ using the examples of the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s and Congo’s Kimberly process (p.41). Nili’s argument might have been enriched by a reflection on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as well as the economic sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Sudan. Nili’s combination of a theoretical and empirical analysis is persuasive. However, Nili’s argument suffers from a theoretical fallacy based on Nili’s conflation of ‘citizen’ and ‘government’ and, also faces a criticism on meta-ethical