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74 Politics in a Small World

against individuals or groups is considered as violating human rights.

State actors define human rights, and agree on what they mean and how
they should be institutionalized. In all these ways, they are the guarantors
of the human rights of individuals within their jurisdiction. But in inter-
national human rights law it is also state actors who violate human rights.
What is to be done when state actors do not respect the human rights
norms to which their state has committed itself by signing and ratifying
international human rights agreements?
The most controversial answer to this problem in recent years has been
calls for military interventions led by the US and its allies. Such occasions

raise very difficult dilemmas for political cosmopolitans. If individuals are
being tortured, raped, and murdered, often with the cooperation of mili-
tarized sections of their own state, who is responsible for ensuring that
rights they have as members of the “ universal community ” of humanity
are guaranteed? In fact, “ actually existing ” cosmopolitan law offers little
help with this dilemma. As it currently stands, legal support for military
action that is not taken in self - defense is very weak. Although the cosmo-
politan law of human rights has been fostered by the UN system, it is
distinctly at odds with the UN ’ s statist Charter, developed to preserve the
sovereign integrity of states to ensure world peace. The duty to intervene
in a state ’ s affairs on humanitarian grounds may be extrapolated morally
from “ the Nuremberg Principles, ” and from human rights agreements

ratified by states and developed since the UN was founded in 1948. They
are the basis of the “ responsibility to protect ” enjoined on states, and on
the international community where states fail to protect people inside
their borders, that was endorsed by the UN Security Council in 2006.
Nevertheless, the Security Council, the only international body with the
authority to allow war to be declared legitimately, has not so far given
agreement for military interventions on humanitarian grounds. On the
other hand, states involved in military actions taken on the grounds of
humanitarian intervention have consistently sought permission from the
Security Council, and if UN approval for military action were given, it
would consolidate cosmopolitan law in this area (see Douzinas, 2007 :
chapter 9 ).
The work of Jurgen Habermas on developing cosmopolitan law is
interesting in this respect. Habermas saw the humanitarian intervention

in Kosovo in 1998 as morally, if not legally, justified. The US and its allies
had no UN mandate to attack those carrying out “ ethnic cleansing, ” but
Habermas argues that they were right to act against existing international
law in this case, even if the precedent it set in overriding state sovereignty
was dangerous, in order to protect people against the arbitrariness of their