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Chapter 2

The Emergence of Human Rights Discourse in the Security Council: Domestic Repression in Iraq, 1990–1992

Between March and August 1988, the government of Iraq launched a series of lethal poison gas attacks against Kurdish villages in northern Iraq. Western media covered the effects of the chemical weapons attack on the town of Halabja: “Ghastly scenes of bodies strewn along Halabja’s streets, families locked in an embrace of death, lifeless children, doll-like with blackened mouths, eyes, and nails, and the upended carcasses of domestic animals.”¹ The international human rights organization Middle East Watch characterized the Iraqi attacks against its Kurdish population as genocide.² The U.S. State Department publicly condemned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report concluding that there was “overwhelming evidence” that Iraq had used chemical weapons against Kurdish citizens. The United States, the Soviet Union, and at least eleven other states petitioned the UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, to investigate Iraq’s possible use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds, but both Iraq and neighboring Turkey, where large numbers of Kurdish refugees had fled, rejected the UN’s request for access to Kurdish survivors.³ The UN deferred to the sovereign authority of both states and refrained from further interference in their domestic affairs—no formal condemnation of Iraq by the Security Council was forthcoming.

In contrast, during that same period, Iraq also was accused of using chemical weapons in its ongoing war with Iran. On 26 August 1988, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 620 (1988) condemning the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War, which violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol and Security Council Resolution 612. Though both Resolutions 620 and 612 condemned use of chemical weapons in interstate warfare, neither resolution criticized or even mentioned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against its domestic population. Yet three years later in March 1991, army troops loyal to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his elite Republican Guard used helicopter gunships, tanks, and artillery to indiscriminately attack northern Iraqi Kurds and Muslim Shi’a in the south. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis panicked, fled the country, and became stranded in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey and along the border with Iran, creating a humanitarian crisis. This time, only one month later, the UNSC passed Resolution 688 defining the effects of Iraq’s human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security, and France, the UK, and the U.S. enforced a no-fly zone in northern Iraq to prevent the Iraqi regime from attacking the Kurdish people. Between 1988 and 1991, there was a dramatic shift in Security Council responses to Iraqi government attacks against its own population. In 1988 the council concerned itself solely with interstate threats and aggression, but by 1991 it began considering the domestic practices within states and their effects on international peace and security. Human rights considerations lacked legitimacy in Security Council deliberations in 1988, but a series of decisions in 1991 allowed for the limited consideration of human rights concerns in the Iraq case with the unintended consequence of both legitimizing human rights norms as a subject of council debate and laying the groundwork for future humanitarian intervention. This initial deviation in Security Council practice was made possible by a dramatically changed historical and political context and contingencies specific to the Iraq case.

In August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Within hours, the UNSC held an emergency meeting and passed Resolution 660, which condemned the Iraqi invasion and demanded an immediate and complete withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait. This was how the Security Council was designed to work—to respond quickly and decisively to acts of aggression. Yet during the Cold War, the council had rarely exercised its enforcement powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.⁴ In fact, only 7 percent of all Chapter VII resolutions passed by the Security Council between 1946 and 2002 occurred during the Cold War, which means an astonishing 93 percent were adopted after 1989.⁵ Indeed, it was the Security Council’s perceived ability to respond effectively, and in concert, to Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait in August 1990 that ushered in a new era of optimism about the role of the UNSC in maintaining international peace and security. During formal meetings, council members celebrated the newfound international climate of cooperation among them.⁶ The broader UN membership believed that the Security Council was finally beginning to function as originally intended, and expectations grew that the UNSC would now maintain international peace and security by quickly and decisively responding to aggression and protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of weak states.⁷

Studying the case of Iraq is an important starting point for a study of Security Council humanitarian intervention because prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, human rights discourse was considered inappropriate for council discussion. Its inclusion in council debates in 1991 and 1992 had dramatic, if unintended, political effects. Because discourse has the power to both create and foreclose policy options, incorporating human rights norms into formal debates about state sovereignty and international security fundamentally altered the council’s view of the legitimate purpose of military force.

International problem solving relies on problem construction. Policymaking in the Security Council—as in other policymaking forums—is a discursive struggle over the appropriate way to classify political events, the boundaries of problem categories, and the conceptual framing of issues with a view to creating a shared meaning that motivates decision makers to act.⁸ Members of the UNSC united quickly around an intentional story to characterize the war. The intentional story described Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as an external aggression against an independent and sovereign state member of the United Nations—a clear violation of Article 2.7 of the UN Charter. Clarity about the cause and character of the conflict, combined with widespread agreement that the Iraqi regime was the perpetrator of international crimes against Kuwait and its people, made it possible for the Security Council to swiftly reverse the aggression. An unprecedented level of unity persisted for the duration of Operation Desert Storm—the war authorized by the UNSC to reverse Iraq’s occupation. This unity combined with the military success of the operation created a political context in which the UNSC could reexamine the legitimate purpose of military force in international relations, including the use of Chapter VII enforcement powers to address the cross-border impact of a regional humanitarian crisis. The documentary record on Iraq also demonstrates that the arguments that international actors make about the cause and character of conflict and the source of sovereign authority matter because they shape the likelihood that military force will or will not be used in defense of human rights.

The extraordinary maltreatment of the Iraqi people by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of his defeat by coalition forces caused an unprecedented humanitarian disaster as millions of Iraqi Kurds and Shi’as fled across Iraq’s borders into neighboring Iran and Turkey.⁹ This humanitarian crisis, occurring during a traditional interstate war, created a context in which it was possible for Security Council members to consider the relationship between human rights and international security. During formal deliberations, the UNSC incorporated Secretariat briefings on Iraq’s domestic human rights situation—breaking with past practice that excluded such considerations. Because the effects of Saddam Hussein’s human rights violations were threatening both regional peace and security and the sovereignty of Turkey and Iran, the UNSC passed Resolution 688, which condemned Iraqi violations of human rights and demanded international access to Iraq’s population and territory. The passage of Resolution 688 was a watershed moment—it was the first Security Council resolution to define domestic human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security because of its trans-border effects. In part, Resolution 688, “condemns the repression of the Iraqi civilian population in many parts of Iraq, including most recently in the Kurdish-populated areas, the consequences of which threaten international peace and security in the region.”¹⁰

By dictating the terms of the Iraqi government’s treatment of its own population and curtailing its freedom of movement, Resolution 688 challenged the traditional meaning of sovereignty by interfering in the internal affairs of the Iraqi state and by linking minimal standards of human rights protection to the meaning of legitimate sovereign authority. This interference was limited to Iraq, however, and only became possible because Iraq’s own sovereignty had been temporarily suspended by the UN after it had violated core Charter principles. The use of military force against Iraq was an unquestionably straightforward exercise of Chapter VII to reverse international aggression. The cease-fire imposed by the UN “was one of the most intrusive since the Second World War,” demonstrating the seriousness of Iraq’s transgression of international norms.¹¹ Absent this context, it is highly unlikely that Iraq’s treatment of its marginalized and minority populations would have garnered Security Council attention at all, let alone intrusive enforcement action to stop it. Widespread agreement about Iraq’s pariah status, the suspension of Iraqi sovereignty, and the impact on security of the Iraqi government’s human rights violations together created an environment in which a once impermissible practice—the linking of human rights and international security by the UNSC—became possible. Changing council behavior marked a new period of international openness to debating the meaning of sovereignty and the relationship between protecting human rights and maintaining international peace and security. Successful military action in Iraq, the peaceful end of the Cold War, and the inclusion of human rights discourse into Security Council decision making in 1991 created a political opening for subsequent debates about humanitarian intervention in Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Security Council Involvement in Iraq, 1990–1992

The Baath Party began its rule of Iraq in 1968 and Saddam Hussein became the regime’s president in 1979. Hussein’s regime was repressive, with “virtually every important liberty, except the freedom of worship, denied to the country’s 17 million people.”¹² The mukhabarat, Arabic for secret police, ensured that no political dissent was publicly expressed. Its power over the population extended beyond Iraq’s borders—its agents were responsible for many assassinations of and assassination attempts on exiles who engaged in political activity in opposition to the governing regime.¹³ The civilian and military leadership of the Baath regime were disproportionately dominated by Sunni Muslims and by members of Saddam Hussein’s family and allied tribes and clans. Saddam Hussein’s personal autocracy was characterized by the political exclusion of a majority of Iraq’s population. The non-Arab Kurdish population in the north (who made up 25 percent of the population) and the Shi’a Muslim population in the south (50 percent of the population) were excluded from power and accused of separatism by the regime. Because of regime fears of disloyalty, both populations were politically and economically disadvantaged and subject to significant political violence committed by the regime.¹⁴ The Kurdish population was particularly vulnerable to regime repression, particularly after the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran headed by Ayatollah Khomeini allowed Kurdish guerillas who opposed the Iraqi regime to operate across the border from bases in Iran.¹⁵

The Kurdish minority in Iraq numbered between three and four million and lived primarily in the mountainous northeast part of the country adjoining the Kurdish-populated regions of Turkey and Iran. Combined, the numbers of Kurds living within the three states numbered approximately 20 million but international borders made them minority populations in each.¹⁶ Violent oppression of the Kurds by the Iraqi regime was persistent since the early 1980s and included mass disappearances, arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial detention, forced resettlement in an effort to change the demographics of the northern region, extrajudicial killings, chemical weapons slaughter, and many other forms of persecution.¹⁷ The most devastating was the 1987–88 Anfal or “spoils” campaign, which had long-lasting demographic, economic, and psychological effects on the Kurdish population.¹⁸ During this period, the Iraqi regime destroyed approximately five hundred Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, killing between 50,000–100,000 Iraqi Kurds in an attempt to permanently defeat an internal Kurdish insurgency movement as well as to destroy Kurdish culture and way of life.¹⁹ International human rights organizations characterized the Iraqi regime’s campaign against the Kurds as genocide.²⁰ In the particularly egregious incident described at the beginning of the chapter, 5,000 civilians living in Halabja near the Iranian border died following a chemical gas attack on the area by Iraqi armed forces in March 1988.²¹

On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait and overthrew the Kuwaiti regime—only two years after acceptance of a UN-brokered cease-fire that ended its eight-year war with Iran. Saddam Hussein initially tried to justify his invasion of Kuwait as “invited,” but the underlying motive for Iraq’s “forced coup” was based in large part on a long-standing border dispute between the two countries.²² Iraq sought control of the Khaur Abd Allah Channel to expand territorial access to the gulf. This control was particularly important in August 1990 because of the closure of the Shatt al-Arab River due to war-related damage from the Iran-Iraq War. The Shatt had carried nearly two–thirds of Iraq’s nonoil cargo.²³ Additionally, Iraq was facing significant economic problems as a result of the Iran-Iraq War including cash shortages and mounting foreign debt. Iraq was pushed to the brink of a financial crisis in February 1990 when the price of oil dramatically decreased, and the Iraqi regime blamed Kuwait for driving the price of oil down by refusing to stick to its oil production quotas, even accusing Kuwait of intentionally harming Iraq by stealing oil and manipulating oil prices. Saddam Hussein was further angered when Kuwait refused to cancel Iraq’s debts and offered no financial assistance despite Iraq’s financial crisis.²⁴ Saddam Hussein’s treatment of Kuwaiti citizens and other residents of Kuwait in the immediate aftermath of the invasion mirrored his treatment of his domestic population. Hundreds were killed and wounded, thousands detained, and hundreds of thousands forced to flee Kuwait. The human rights violations leveled against Kuwait’s civilian population included extrajudicial executions, torture, rape, and large-scale arbitrary imprisonment.²⁵

The international response to the Iraqi invasion and its treatment of Kuwaiti civilians was openly hostile. During an emergency meeting on 2 August that convened at 5:10 A.M. in New York, the UNSC unanimously passed Resolution 660 condemning the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, identifying it as a breach of international peace and security, and demanding immediate and complete Iraqi withdrawal.²⁶ In total, the council passed twelve resolutions between 2 August and 29 November 1990 affirming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kuwait and demanding that Iraq withdraw its armed forces from Kuwaiti territory. Security Council resolutions became increasingly punitive as Iraqi noncompliance continued. In addition to condemning Iraqi violations of international law and demanding compliance with its past resolutions, Resolution 660 created an economic, military, and financial embargo of Iraq. Resolution 660 has been described as “one of the most sweeping ever produced by the United Nations” because it prohibited trade with Iraq and banned financial transfers except for food, medicine, and basic necessities.²⁷ Subsequent resolutions froze Iraqi assets, established a naval blockade of Iraq, and enacted a restrictive sanctions regime backed by force.²⁸

On 29 November 1990, the Security Council passed Resolution 678, authorizing member-states of the United Nations cooperating with the government of Kuwait “to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area” under Chapter VII of the Charter.²⁹ Iraq was given until 15 January 1991 to comply with this and all preceding resolutions or face military force. Resolution 678 passed with the approval of twelve Security Council members (see Table 2.1). Only Cuba and Yemen opposed the resolution, while China abstained. China justified its abstention based on its principled opposition to the use of force to settle international disputes but explained that since Iraq had acted forcefully against Kuwait, China would abstain rather than veto the resolution.³⁰

The near unanimity of the council’s condemnation of Iraqi aggression and its defense of Kuwait were notable. Both permanent and nonpermanent members regarded the Security Council response as “historic” for the United Nations because the council was “rediscovering its true mission”—the maintenance of international peace and security and the use of enforcement action to reverse aggression.³¹ For example, the U.S. secretary of state, James Baker, made the following statement preceding the vote on Resolution 678:

Table 2.1. Security Council Support for Key Resolutions, Iraq

Permanent members of Security Council are in bold type.

With the Cold War behind us, we now have the chance to build the world which was envisioned by the founders of this organization—the founders of the United Nations. We have the chance to make this Security Council and this United Nations true instruments for peace and justice around the globe…. But if we are to do so, we must meet the threat to international peace created by Saddam Hussein’s aggression. And that is why the debate that we are about to begin will, I think, rank as one of the most important in the history of the United Nations; It will surely do much to determine the future of this body.³²

Addressing Iraqi aggression was deemed so important that the UNSC convened at the ministerial level twice, which doubled the previous number of Security Council meetings at the foreign ministerial level.³³ Indeed, the resort to force against Iraq would mark “the start of a new era for the United Nations” because it would transform the collective security system and create a flexible interpretation of Chapter VII.³⁴ It also transformed the UNSC in unintended and unanticipated ways, namely by creating an opening for human rights concerns in Security Council deliberations.

When the 15 January 1991 deadline arrived and Saddam Hussein had not withdrawn the Iraqi military from Kuwait, a coalition of thirty-four countries headed by the United States launched the authorized military attack to reverse Iraqi aggression against Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm began on 17 January 1991 with a massive air assault. Weeks of intensive bombing were followed by a ground offensive that was launched on 24 February 1991 and lasted only one hundred hours. Security Council resolutions did not authorize Coalition forces to take military action beyond liberating Kuwait, as the objective of the war was to remove Iraq from Kuwait and simultaneously damage Saddam Hussein’s offensive military capabilities.³⁵ This limited objective was necessary for maintaining cohesion in the coalition. The defeat of the Iraqi Army was swift and definitive. Honoring the limited objectives of the military campaign supported by the UNSC, Coalition forces did not enter Baghdad or require the removal of Saddam Hussein as a condition of surrender. Nonetheless, the terms of the ceasefire outlined in Resolution 686 were severe. They included the acceptance of all previous Security Council resolutions, mandatory reparations for war damages, the release of POWs, the return of stolen property, and maintenance of the sanctions regime.³⁶ Resolution 687, which passed on 3 April 1991, imposed further obligations, including international demarcation of the Iraq-Kuwait border and the establishment of a UN peacekeeping operation to monitor it and the destruction of all Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, which would be overseen by international inspection teams.³⁷ The sanctions regime, including the trade embargo and ban on oil sales, would remain in effect until Iraq had achieved total compliance with all aspects of the resolution. Resolution 687 has been described as “the longest and most comprehensive in UN history” with its provisions placing much of Iraq’s economy and military under international control.³⁸

The war with Coalition forces had further devastating economic and political effects on Iraq. The war had destroyed much of Iraq’s industry and infrastructure and the sanctions regime had eliminated nearly all trade. The ban on oil sales severely diminished Iraq’s income and most states, including the most powerful, had severed diplomatic relations with Iraq. Regionally, Iraq was viewed as a pariah. Domestically, the regime faced internal threats from disaffected military personnel and an increasingly frustrated civilian population. Years of repression combined with nearly a decade of war and economic hardship had taken a toll on Iraq’s domestic population, particularly in the northern and southern regions of the country. By March 1991 spontaneous, unruly, and unorganized rebellions led by returning soldiers and urban Iraqi youth threatened government control of fourteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces.³⁹ Yet by April, the uprising was over and what started out as a seemingly straightforward military operation to reverse Iraqi aggression and reaffirm Kuwait’s sovereignty and territorial integrity took a decidedly radical turn when the Security Council shifted its focus from Iraq’s behavior in Kuwait to its behavior within its own borders.

At the beginning of March 1991, just days after the humiliating defeat of the Iraqi Army by the Coalition forces, Iraqi Army deserters, disaffected soldiers, and local residents of the southern Shi’a city of Basra revolted against Hussein’s rule. Taking advantage of what they thought was a temporary power vacuum, opponents sought to attack the regime while it was still on the defensive and while extensive dislocation remained in Baghdad. The revolt spread quickly and spontaneously throughout southern Iraq, from Basra to Karbala, Najaf, Hilla, Nasiriyya, and al-Amar.⁴⁰ During the revolt, rebel troops aided by urban youth and civilians targeted symbols of the Iraqi regime including the Baath Party and security forces headquarters, prisons, and military barracks. According to Middle East Watch, semiorganized opposition groups received a spontaneous outpouring of support from civilians who were angry about government repression and the devastation of multiple wars fought by the regime.⁴¹ The rebels were unable to build a broader base, however, because interference from Iranian fighters gave the rebellion an unpopular ideological cast and the chaos, destruction, and brutal retribution leveled against members of the regime frightened Sunnis and more moderate elements of the population.⁴² The rebels also underestimated the strength of the Iraqi regime, which quickly stamped out the uprising when the military refused to join the rebels and international actors failed to intervene. Hussein had remained both powerful and attentive to internal threats to his power. Using his elite Republican Guard and support from the army, he regained control of southern Iraq on 13 March 1991. Saddam Hussein’s retribution was swift and harsh. Middle East Watch reported,

Those who remained in the south were at the mercy of advancing government troops, who went through neighborhoods, firing indiscriminately and summarily executing hundreds of young men…. Refugees alleged to Middle East Watch and others that Iraqi helicopters dropped a variety of ordnance on civilians, including napalm and phosphorus bombs, chemical agents and sulfuric acid. Representatives of human rights and humanitarian organizations who saw refugees with burn injuries or photographs of such injuries were unable to confirm the source of these burns. However, doctors who examined wounded Iraqis said that some of their burns were consistent with the use of napalm.⁴³

Iraqi troops engaged in widespread atrocities against the civilian population. The violence was particularly heavy in the southern marshes, where much of the local Shi’a population had congregated rather than face extensive risks in escaping the country in the flat, exposed terrain of the south.⁴⁴

While Hussein’s Republican Guard was battling revolt in the south, northern Iraqi Kurds rose up against the regime on 5 March 1991 in Raniyya. As in the south, this revolt spread rapidly as the local population joined. The uprising in the north was characterized by a higher degree of organization and leadership due to the participation of formal Kurdish party organizations and the Fursan—Kurdish military forces that had previously been allied with the Iraqi government but switched sides during the uprising. By 21 March, Kurdish insurgents controlled every major city in its territory except for Mosul, capital of the Nineveh Province.⁴⁵ Yet the revolt was reversed nearly as suddenly as it began. Once the violence in the south was quelled, the loyalist army troops and Republican Guard mobilized in the north, using helicopter gunships, tanks, and artillery to indiscriminately attack the Kurds. The regime’s counterattack reopened the wounds of the Anfal campaign, provoking panic among the Kurdish population, who exited the country en masse. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Kurds became stranded in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey as they sought to escape the repression.

The result of intensified fighting between Iraqi insurgents and the government of Saddam Hussein was a humanitarian catastrophe. According to Middle East Watch, over 1.5 million Iraqis escaped the attacks in the cities during the months of March and April. Yet many of the displaced were injured or died during their flight from Iraq because of poor conditions. For example, at least 5,000 were killed by land mines as they attempted to cross the mined border between Iraq and Turkey.⁴⁶ By the beginning of April, at least 400,000 Kurdish refugees were pushed into the mountains between Turkey and Iraq. The death toll for these refugees was estimated to be 1,000 per day. In addition to the Kurds who sought refuge in Turkey, up to 1 million Kurdish refugees crossed the border into Iran at the beginning of April, along with 70,000 Shi’a refugees.⁴⁷

The Intentional Causal Story

Security Council members told two different sets of causal stories about Iraqi violence: one about its violence against Kuwait and one about its violence against its own domestic population. Council deliberations about the cause and character of Iraq’s military action against Kuwait were marked by incredible unanimity. Members of the Security Council articulated only a single causal story—an intentional story—to describe the conflict. The intentional story characterized the war as an external aggression by Iraq against the sovereign state of Kuwait in violation of the United Nations Charter and international legal norms. States as diverse as Canada, Colombia, Malaysia, and Finland as well as all five of the permanent members of the Security Council condemned “the naked Iraqi invasion of Kuwait’s territory.”⁴⁸ Resolution 660, which defined the conflict as international aggression and demanded its reversal, was passed unanimously by the UNSC (see Table 2.1). Even prior to the passage of Resolution 660, the Russian Federation described Iraq’s actions as a “violation of international peace and security.” China, which is generally resistant to the use of enforcement measures, likewise endorsed this and subsequent resolutions condemning Iraqi behavior, abstaining only from resolutions that authorized “all necessary measures” or addressed the domestic practices of the Iraqi government.⁴⁹ In fact, the only state on record that objected to the intentional story about the war against Kuwait was Iraq itself. This unprecedented level of unity around an intentional story of conflict made the Security Council’s Chapter VII authorization to use military force possible. Indeed, because the intentional story appeals to principles of justice and international law, its policy implications include protection, interdiction, or punishment. The intentional story persisted in the UNSC throughout Operation Desert Storm.

Security Council endorsement of an intentional causal story softened only when a majority of its members used it to characterize the Iraqi regime’s violence against its own population in April 1991. The move to discuss Iraq’s internal practices was both highly controversial and unprecedented in Security Council practice. Yet a majority of council members (eleven members) articulated an intentional story to describe Iraqi violence against its own Kurdish and Shi’a populations. Seven council members (Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, France, India, Romania, the UK, and the U.S.) articulated a strong intentional story about brutal repression and the indiscriminate use of force by the Iraqi regime against its Kurdish and Shi’a populations in contravention of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions. These members argued that violations of international humanitarian law constituted a threat to international peace and security.⁵⁰ For example, France argued that Iraq’s repression of its minorities garnered international interest because it was at such proportions as to be considered a crime against humanity.⁵¹ This story was embraced by an additional seven states, primarily European, whose representatives spoke as nonvoting participants during the council meeting.⁵² Germany advocated a particularly strong version of the perpetrator-victim narrative when it argued that Saddam Hussein’s violence against the Kurdish minority was a harbinger of genocide.⁵³

Four Security Council members (Austria, Ecuador, Russia, and Zaire) articulated a softer version of the intentional story. They agreed that Iraq was violating international humanitarian law but noted that Iraq’s behavior was primarily internal. Nonetheless, because of its external effects, this internal violence warranted international attention and condemnation.⁵⁴ Presumably for these members, in absence of transborder effects, Iraq’s domestic practices would not have warranted Security Council attention. In contrast, China, Cuba, Yemen, and Zimbabwe argued that the Security Council had no right to intervene in the internal matters of a sovereign state, citing Article 2.7 of the UN Charter. They strongly objected to Iraq’s domestic behavior being discussed at all, yet they did not articulate an alternative story to describe the situation nor did they dispute the cause or character of the regime’s violence, only its relevance to Security Council deliberations.

International Security, Human Rights, and the Purpose of Military Force

Unity in the UNSC around an intentional causal story allowed deliberations to quickly shift from the cause and character of the conflict to the relationship between human rights and international security. After Coalition forces successfully reversed the Iraqi occupation, Security Council members began to debate whether humanitarian and international human rights concerns were relevant to council business, and in turn whether international humanitarian law and international human rights law were changing the purpose of military force. On 5 April 1991, Turkey and Iran requested that the UNSC respond to the mounting humanitarian crisis on their borders. They argued that the rapid flow of refugees out of Iraq and into their sovereign territory threatened to destabilize their regimes and the entire region. The effects of Iraq’s military repression of its civilians, they argued, were a threat to international peace and security. During deliberations, Turkey informed the Security Council that nearly one million Iraqi refugees were heading toward the Iraqi-Turkish border, arguing that no single country could cope with such a massive influx of destitute people. Turkey described the mounting humanitarian crisis as a “grave threat to the peace and security of the region” both because of “the scale of the human tragedy” and because Iraqi mortar shells were landing on the Turkish side of the border.⁵⁵ Iran asserted that it expected to receive half a million Iraqi refugees in subsequent days. Echoing the concerns of Turkey, Iran argued that the crisis inside Iraq had international dimensions because it threatened the security of neighbor countries with the potential of further destabilizing the entire region. Iran urged the Security Council to deal “both with the cause of the crisis and with its immediate symptoms.”⁵⁶

Convinced that the effects of Saddam Hussein’s brutal repression were threatening the sovereignty and security of Iraq’s neighbors, the Security Council passed Resolution 688, which defined the consequences of Iraq’s repression of its civilian population as a threat to international peace and security. Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease violating human rights and international humanitarian law and open its territory to humanitarian relief organizations and military observers.⁵⁷ As Table 2.1 illustrates, Resolution 688 was the most divisive of the key resolutions passed by the UNSC on the situation in Iraq. It received only ten votes in favor in contrast to unanimous support for Resolution 660. Three members opposed the resolution and two others abstained, reflecting division within the council on the relevance of human rights to Security Council work. Nevertheless, the passage of Resolution 688 was monumental—never before had the Security Council defined the effects of a state’s domestic behavior as a threat to international peace and security. Its passage signaled the growing legitimacy of international human rights norms and an emergent Security Council interest in humanitarianism. Yet the appeal to human rights norms was conditional and nuanced. Nearly all council members, even supporters of Resolution 688, reaffirmed their commitment to state sovereignty and noninterference in the domestic affairs of states. Condemnation of Iraq’s domestic behavior was only possible because the Iraqi regime’s sovereignty had already been suspended by the Security Council in response to Iraq’s blatant disregard for international legal norms, including its violations of sovereignty norms and the ban on the use of force without Security Council authorization. With its sovereign authority suspended, there was no direct conflict between sovereignty norms and human rights norms. Indeed, the protection of human rights in this case reaffirmed and protected the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq’s neighbors that were the referents for Security Council action. Resolution 688 simultaneously redefined regional and international security interests to include the protection of human rights and reaffirmed Article 2.7 of the Charter of the United Nations. The Security Council’s demand for immediate and unlimited access to Iraq’s sovereign territory was revolutionary but possible only because Iraq’s domestic repression had destabilizing effects outside its borders.

References to human rights during Security Council deliberations marked a significant change in council behavior, however tentative and nuanced those affirmations of human rights were. The 5 April meeting record shows that a majority of Security Council members and nonvoting participants articulated a direct link between human rights and their national and international interests. Eighteen of the thirty-one participating states described Iraqi human right violations and the resulting humanitarian tragedy as a threat to international peace and security. These states included nine of the fifteen Security Council members—Austria, Belgium, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, France, Russia, the UK, the U.S., and Zimbabwe—and nine nonvoting participants—Canada, Denmark, Germany, Iran, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Pakistan, Sweden, and Turkey. Human rights concerns were relevant, they argued, because of the transborder impact of refugee flows. Ten of these eighteen states simultaneously registered their strong support for Charter principles that protect the domestic jurisdiction of states from external interference, which suggests that it was the extraordinary nature of the Iraq situation that justified Security Council action to address the root causes of regional instability within the borders of Iraq rather than a transformation in the normative standing of the nonintervention principle. Council members emphasized the contingencies of the Iraq situation as justification for this unusual deviation. The representative from Belgium summed it up this way: “As far as Belgium is concerned, such support is in this case justified by the very specific considerations arising from an exceptionally serious situation which threatens peace and security in the region.”⁵⁸ Cognizant of the implications of such a radical departure from previous Security Council behavior, the majority of members appeared eager to distinguish the Iraq case as unique in the hopes of discouraging the creation of precedent. Ecuador, for example, drew attention to the inherent tension between two relevant principles in the Charter: the unrestricted respect for human rights and nonintervention in the internal affairs of states. Ecuador reasoned that because the human rights situation extended beyond the borders of Iraq it moved beyond the sphere of Iraq’s internal affairs, eliminating the tension between these Charter principles and justifying an international response.⁵⁹

The statements by France, Germany, Norway, and the UK were exceptional because they justified Security Council interference inside of Iraq’s borders based on the nature of the atrocities alone, independent of the transborder security impact. According to the UK, the protection of civilians mandated by the Geneva Conventions was sufficient justification for Security Council action.⁶⁰ Norway argued that Iraqi actions contravened internationally accepted human rights standards and norms of behavior.⁶¹ France asserted that the human rights violations observed in Iraq assumed “the dimension of a crime against humanity,” and Germany said they “harbor[ed] danger of genocide.”⁶² Germany also argued that the Security Council could only be successful in returning peace and security to the region if domestic peace was assured inside of Iraq, drawing an explicit link between human rights and international peace. Thus it was “the legitimate right of the international community to call for respect for human rights,” according to Germany.⁶³ No matter how striking these statements are from a human rights perspective, they represented a minority opinion among the participants in the Security Council meeting, the vast majority of whom argued that internal human rights issues were only relevant if they had international effects.

Cuba, Yemen, and Zimbabwe articulated strong disagreement with any Security Council involvement in the internal affairs of Iraq. They argued that it was not within the competence of the Security Council to address the humanitarian crisis. For example, Cuba asserted: “The Security Council simply has no right to violate the principle of non-intervention. It has no right to intervene unduly in the internal affairs of any State. It has no right to intervene unduly in matters within the competence of other organs of the United Nations.”⁶⁴ Yemen argued further that the resolution politicized a humanitarian issue because it focused primarily on a small segment of the affected Iraqi population—the Iraqi Kurds—while neglecting the Shi’a. India, which abstained, advanced a more nuanced argument. While the crisis warranted international attention, India reasoned, other organs of the UN were better suited to address humanitarian needs. China remarked that the question was one of “great complexity” because both the internal affairs of a country and the stability of its neighbor states were involved. China suggested that the international aspects of the question “should be settled through the appropriate channels,” by which it suggested that the UNSC was not the appropriate venue for addressing human rights or humanitarian crises.⁶⁵ Yet none of the opponents of Security Council involvement disputed that human rights violations were occurring or justified the Iraqi regime’s behavior. Instead, they argued that the UNSC was not the appropriate venue to address the crisis. This suggests that the growing legitimacy of human rights norms meant that detractors did not wish to be seen as condoning human rights violations.

In sum, the Security Council made a strong break with past practice when it integrated human rights norms into Security Council decision making. The inclusion of human rights in Security Council discussions, however, diminished the unity among its members, who were divided about their relevance to council deliberations. Resolution 688 reflected a compromise position that was supported by most council members and nonvoting participants. It reaffirmed the national jurisdiction of states but argued that the human rights situation caused by Iraq was no longer an internal matter of the Iraqi state. The inclusion of human rights in Security Council decision making on Iraq was a watershed moment, yet the embrace of human rights norms was situational and contingent on Iraq’s prior invasion of Kuwait and the effects of human rights violations on neighbor states that appealed to the UNSC for help.

From Resolution 688 to No-Fly Zones: Divisions on Human Rights Enforcement

On 10 April 1991, France, the UK, and the U.S., three permanent members, declared a “no-fly” zone in northern Iraq above the thirty-sixth parallel, creating a safety zone that covered almost ten thousand square kilometers of Iraqi territory.⁶⁶ Its purpose was to provide protective cover for humanitarian aid agencies and Coalition forces to safely enter refugee camps on Iraqi territory and to protect Iraqi Kurds from air attacks by Iraqi military forces. Resolution 688 had demanded an end to Iraqi repression and mandated that Iraq permit international humanitarian organizations access to its population. Resolution 688 did not reference Chapter VII, which authorizes the use of military force, but the three permanent members argued that their use of enforcement measures was a necessary response to extreme humanitarian need and tacitly permitted by the resolution.⁶⁷ They argued that because the no-fly zone was necessary to the fulfillment of Resolution 688, any enforcement action undertaken for this purpose was legitimate even if it had not been expressly authorized by the Security Council. Other council members did not publicly weigh in on these attempts to further link humanitarian and human rights concerns to international security and the purpose of military force until well over a year later.

On 11 August 1992 the Security Council met to discuss continued Iraqi noncompliance with council resolutions but the meeting quickly developed into a debate among members about the legitimacy of human rights in council work. The debate proceeded in two parts: (1) the appropriateness of the participation of Max van der Stoel, the special rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights for Iraq, in a formal meeting of the Security Council, and (2) the human rights situation inside Iraq and what, if any, relevance it had to Security Council operations. Security Council members uniformly condemned Iraqi regime’s repression of its population but were divided over the continuing intrusion of human rights concerns into their meetings. Council members divided into three groups: norm promoters who actively sought to incorporate human rights concerns; norm detractors who denied the relevance and appropriateness of human rights concerns to the Security Council; and norm instrumentalists who supported the inclusion of human rights on a conditional, instrumental basis—only when such information would help the council execute its Charter mandate.

On 11 August, Belgium, France, the UK, and the U.S. invited Van der Stoel to brief the UNSC on recent human rights developments in Iraq, citing rule 39 of the Provisional Rules of Procedure, which reads, “The Security Council may invite members of the Secretariat or other persons, whom it considers competent for the purpose, to supply it with information or to give other assistance in examining matters within its competence.”⁶⁸ Anticipating the potential push back from norm detractors, they emphasized that the Security Council would receive Van der Stoel in his personal capacity and not as the special rapporteur for Iraq appointed by the Commission on Human Rights. States that took an instrumental approach to the norms debate, like Ecuador and Zimbabwe, argued that normally it would be inappropriate for the Security Council to examine or take a stand on the human rights report written by Van der Stoel because it would undermine the division of responsibility within the UN system. However, because the Security Council had already passed Resolution 688, information that would help it execute its mandate was within the purview of the council. Norm instrumentalists consented to the request by the norm promoters for Van der Stoel’s participation based on the understanding that he would be speaking in his personal capacity.⁶⁹ Detractors like China and India noted their strong reservations, arguing that matters pertaining to human rights should appropriately be discussed in the Commission on Human Rights.⁷⁰ India argued, “It is the consistent position of the Indian delegation that the various organs and bodies of the United Nations should restrict their deliberations and actions within their respective spheres of competence as defined in the Charter…. The Council can focus its legitimate attention on the threat or likely threat to peace and stability in the region but it cannot discuss human rights situations per se or make recommendations on matters outside its competence.”⁷¹ In the end, Van der Stoel was permitted to testify in his personal capacity, in large part because permanent members are not permitted to veto procedural matters.

Van der Stoel’s testimony reaffirmed the intentional story about Iraq’s internal behavior whereby the government was engaged in a systematic attempt to repress and kill large portions of the southern Shi’a and northern Kurdish populations.⁷² Van der Stoel argued that the Iraqi regime’s economic blockade of the north was threatening a new humanitarian catastrophe as hunger became widespread. He also testified that humanitarian relief to the southern marshes was restricted by the Iraqi government in violation of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Iraq is a party, and paragraph 3 of Resolution 688, which demanded immediate access to all Iraqis in need of humanitarian assistance.⁷³ The Iraqi regime was engaged in a major military offensive against civilians in the southern marshes using artillery bombardment and fixed-wing aircraft. Van der Stoel reminded the council that international passivity in the late 1980s had allowed Iraq to exterminate part of the Iraqi Kurd population and urged the council to avoid repeating that tragedy.⁷⁴ In short, his testimony encouraged the UNSC to expand its engagement with the Iraqi civilian population deep inside the borders of Iraq and not just in the border areas where neighbor states might be threatened.

As in the meeting preceding the passage of Resolution 688 the year before, the debate following Van der Stoel’s briefing in August 1992 was not about the cause or character of the violence in Iraq or its resultant human rights violations. Rather, it was about whether the Security Council had a responsibility or a right to respond to them, and whether human rights violations were linked to the maintenance of international peace and security. Detractors of the linkage between human rights and international security were noticeably quiet in the subsequent debate and declined to speak on the public record in response to Van der Stoel’s briefing. Only nine Security Council members—all of whom articulated a direct link between the protection of human rights and the maintenance of international peace and security—made formal statements in response to the briefing. States like Hungary, Japan, and Austria argued that gross and systematic human rights violations alone warranted Security Council attention. Hungary underscored this point: “[There is a] link that exists between the way a Government treats its own citizens and the way that it acts in the international arena as well as [a] link between enforcing respect for human rights and maintaining international peace and security.”⁷⁵ Similarly, Austria argued,

The protection of human rights and, in particular, of the rights of ethnic minorities too, has had an important impact on the development of peaceful relations between states. There is a direct connection between democratic processes within countries and the evolution of a political culture which is conducive to the peaceful settlement of disputes. From our own history, we know that peace was most threatened when human rights were abolished and minorities persecuted and when democratic processes gave way to totalitarian practices. Human rights, minority rights and democracy, are, therefore, important cornerstones of our common endeavour.⁷⁶

The political implication for the Security Council was that respect for human rights was more than a legal or humanitarian question; rather, respect for human rights was also “an integral part of international collective security.” Thus, the Security Council should take an “unambiguous and clear cut stand for the protection of those rights whenever and wherever they are flagrantly violated.”⁷⁷ In short, protecting human rights and international humanitarian law was central to the primary functions of the UNSC.

The majority of Security Council members took the more instrumental approach by emphasizing that human rights were a concern of the Security Council only in such instances when human rights violations directly threatened international peace and security. According to this view, human rights violations were duly addressed by other UN organs unless their consequences had a direct bearing on international or regional peace and security. For example, France reasoned that the Security Council had an obligation to prevent massive human rights violations in the southern marshes as a means of preventing a mass exodus of refugees, which would further threaten security in the region.⁷⁸ Belgium, Russia, the UK, and the U.S. each argued that the Iraqi government’s flagrant defiance of Security Council directives and especially those of Resolution 688 made the human rights behavior of Iraq relevant to council consideration. Russia emphasized the necessity of states to follow Security Council directives:

The Russian Federation attaches great importance to the full and consistent implementation of the resolutions of the Security Council which are intended to eliminate the consequences of the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait and to establish a lasting peace and security in that region. Accordingly, we, like other Council members, are very seriously alarmed by reports of a continuing policy of repression against the civilian population in various parts of Iraq, which constitutes a direct violation of the demand, contained in resolution 688 (1991), that Iraq, as a contribution to the removing of the threat to international peace and security in the region, should end the repression against its own civilian population.⁷⁹

Iraqi defiance of Security Council resolutions, and in particular the directive to stop repressing its population as detailed in Resolution 688, made its human rights practices an appropriate subject of Security Council discussion. In passing Resolution 688 the Security Council had determined that the consequences of Iraqi repression threatened international security. Because Resolution 688 demanded that Iraq cease the repression of its civilian population, evidence of the Iraqi regime’s compliance, or lack thereof, was integral to Security Council deliberation. At minimum, both groups agreed that when human rights violations affect the security of other sovereign states they become relevant to Security Council deliberations. Fifteen days after this discussion, on 26 August 1992, France, the UK, and the U.S. imposed a “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq (Operation Southern Watch) below the thirty-second parallel to protect the Shi’as from further aerial attacks as those nations had done previously with the Kurds in the north in April 1991.

The Interplay of Interests and Norms During Security Council Deliberations

Human rights norms were incorporated into Security Council meetings in 1991 specifically because the Iraqi refugee crisis posed a direct threat to both the international security interests and normative values of a majority of the council members. France, the UK, and the U.S. were particularly susceptible to increasing domestic and international pressure to address the tragedy, which was directly linked to Operation Desert Storm and was vividly captured by Western media and broadcast worldwide. Because Turkey was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, any security risk to it was a threat to the entire alliance, which was obligated to defend it. Despite these interests, however, Security Council members from Europe and the Americas also viewed the crisis as a threat to their core values—the promotion of freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. Ambassador Diego Arria of Venezuela, for example, described his country’s motivations this way: “The concern of my country in this debate is founded on its unswerving solidarity and concern in respect of a subject of primary importance for humankind, namely, the defence of human rights wherever they are violated or trampled underfoot, and on its aspiration to see peace and harmony restored in a region whose people are traditionally friends of Venezuela.”⁸⁰ Failure to address the crisis threatened the shared vision of the new world order that was so anxiously anticipated by UN members at the end of the Cold War, and particularly by France, the UK, and the U.S.

Security Council members from democratic states also were susceptible to the humanitarian impulse of their populations. Growing domestic and international pressure to respond to the unfolding tragedy came from three sources: the international media; independent experts, including officials of human rights organizations; and compelling eyewitness testimony, which had a significant impact. First, the international media presence in the region was substantial because of previous coverage of Operation Desert Storm. Live television images and photographs of the utter devastation of the Kurdish community were broadcast internationally, causing the domestic populations of Coalition states to pressure their governments to respond to the crisis, in part because they believed the war was a cause of the rebellion.⁸¹ The extensive media attention to the plight of the Kurds elicited public outrage in the U.S. and threatened to overshadow the military success of Desert Storm. The U.S. government was motivated to respond, in part, because the crisis directly threatened the political aims of the war.⁸² In short, the humanitarian crisis threatened U.S. national interests by detracting from U.S. accomplishments in the Persian Gulf. Nonetheless, it is also true that while media coverage and popular opinion added to the pressure and urgency for the U.S. to respond, President George H. W. Bush had “declared his intention to intervene before the public could find its voice.”⁸³

Second, independent experts like those from international human rights organizations used this opportunity to release extensive reports detailing the Iraqi regime’s past human rights violations, including the Anfal campaign. They linked ongoing Iraqi repression to its past genocidal behavior.⁸⁴ At the very time that Saddam Hussein’s military was indiscriminately attacking Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq, Middle East Watch presented compelling evidence to the international public of his past genocidal efforts to destroy the Kurdish minority. Middle East Watch chastised the allied powers and in particular the United States for failing to assist the Kurds of Halabja in 1988 or to punish the Iraqi regime until after it had invaded Kuwait.⁸⁵ The pressure exerted on the U.S. and European states was twofold: they were criticized for past failures to prevent or punish human rights abuses against the Kurds in Iraq, and they were pressured to stop the Iraqi regime’s abuses against the Kurds in the present and punish it for those abuses. In short, these advocacy groups publicly urged Security Council members to make their foreign policy behavior consistent with their professed values.

Third, the eyewitness testimony of U.S. secretary of state James Baker, who visited the refugee encampments along the Turkish border, was crucial for gaining Bush administration support for Operation Provide Comfort and the creation of the no-fly zones. In early April 1991, Baker witnessed the precarious situation of the displaced Kurds after being urged by then assistant secretary of state Margaret Tutwiler to make a personal visit to the camps. Baker was hesitant to go but Tutwiler had argued that it was necessary to demonstrate in a dramatic way that the U.S. had not abandoned the region at the end of the war.⁸⁶ Baker’s motives for the visit were shaped primarily by domestic and foreign policy interests. Yet these interests were threatened by the administration’s perceived failure to live up to the normative expectations of domestic and international publics who believed the U.S. had a responsibility to protect human rights and to respond to the suffering of the Iraqi population.

Talking with a delegation of Kurdish refugees who had survived Saddam Hussein’s repression and had witnessed the slaughter of family members had a visceral impact on the secretary of state. Baker later said that he had “witnessed the suffering and desperation of the Iraqi people and that their experiences of cruelty and human anguish defied description.”⁸⁷ He identified his personal experience of meeting Kurdish refugees as the principal motivation for the subsequent U.S. approach to Iraq policy:

My experience on that rugged hillside was not only the catalyst for a huge expansion of American and international relief to the Kurds that came to be known as Operation Provide Comfort: it also galvanized me into pressing for a new policy, announced by the President on April 16, of establishing safe havens for the Kurds in northern Iraq-refugee camps secured by U.S. forces and administered by the United Nations…. It was the largest military relief operation ever undertaken, and delivered millions of dollars in food and supplies to more than 400,000 refugees.⁸⁸

It is clear that political and military interests merged with human rights values and humanitarian concerns to produce an unprecedented U.S. and ultimately Security Council response. Compelling expert testimony, graphic television and photographic imagery, and their impact on international public opinion had a particularly strong influence on the Security Council.

The character of the military intervention itself demonstrates that both material interests and humanitarian considerations shaped Security Council decision making. If the three permanent members had been solely concerned with Turkish sovereignty and stability, sealing the Iraqi border to protect its neighbors from the negative effects of Iraq’s repression would have been sufficient. Relative to sovereignty and stability, it was unnecessary to undertake a far-reaching humanitarian relief effort deep within the borders of Iraq. Further, the initial preoccupation with the situation of the Kurds and the establishment of the no-fly zone in the north but not the south betrays the underlying national security interests of those three permanent members, yet material interests cannot explain the decision to extend that same protection to the southern Shi’as over a year later when they did not pose a cross-border security threat. Moreover, while domestic pressure and international media attention were significant factors in the establishment of the no-fly zone in the north in 1991, they were not significant factors in the decision to extend the no-fly zone to the south in 1992. Indeed, in August 1992 there was little international attention devoted to the plight of the unprotected Shi’a relative to the focus on humanitarian tragedies happening in Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina at that same time. Nonetheless, the Security Council expanded its protection to the southern Iraqi Shi’a. In sum, domestic security interests were necessary to produce humanitarian action by France, the UK, and the U.S.; but humanitarian values and human rights norms in turn helped to constitute those national interests.

The Competing Normative Demands of State Sovereignty and Human Rights

Defining human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security has the potential to expose Security Council members to competing normative demands. The council is charged with two principal tasks: regulating state sovereignty and maintaining international peace and security. Protecting the norm of state sovereignty often leads to a policy of nonintervention in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. Maintaining international peace and security often involves enforcement action under Chapters VI, VII, and VIII of the Charter. When human rights violations are defined as a threat to international peace and security, the protection of human rights may require enforcement action within the sovereign boundaries of a state without its permission, bringing sovereignty norms and human rights norms into conflict. Norm research shows that when two norms come into conflict, the stronger, more institutionalized norm generally wins out over the newer, less established norm.⁸⁹ As a result, it is expected that when these two sets of norms conflict in a place like the UNSC, sovereignty norms should trump human rights. This did not happen in Iraq in 1991 and 1992 because Security Council members had temporarily suspended Iraqi sovereignty and discursively constructed the protection of human rights as complementary to the preservation of Turkey and Iran’s sovereignty, eliminating the tension between the two norms.

Although Resolution 688 was unprecedented for redefining international security interests to include the protection of human rights, it also reaffirmed the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of member states, despite demanding immediate and unfettered access to Iraq’s sovereign territory and the end to human rights violations against its citizens. The UNSC reconciled this inherent tension between sovereignty and human rights norms by reasoning that the internal human rights situation extended beyond the border of Iraq, moving it beyond the realm of domestic affairs, and thereby justifying an international response.⁹⁰ In effect, Resolution 688 reaffirmed the domestic jurisdiction of states over their peoples and territories while portraying the human rights situation as no longer an internal matter of the Iraqi state. Thus the resolution cited Article 2.7 of the Charter of the United Nations (which protects state sovereignty), the preamble of the Charter (which identifies the protection of human rights as a function of the United Nations), and Chapter VII (which authorizes enforcement action to protect international security) simultaneously.

The prior reversal of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait by Coalition forces acting under UNSC authority created the unusual conditions necessary for a small group of powerful members to extend enforcement action to include the protection of human rights in northern and southern Iraq. Iraq was viewed as a pariah state because it had violated the highly internalized norms of state sovereignty and territorial integrity when it invaded Kuwait. Since Iraqi sovereignty had already been temporarily suspended for its breach of international norms, it was easier to garner political support in the Security Council for an expansion of its mission for humanitarian purposes. The promotion of human rights norms in Iraq occurred within the context of a conventional war in which the sovereignty of the aggressor state had been temporarily suspended, removing the tension between the protection of state sovereignty and the promotion of human rights norms.⁹¹ In this sense, the promotion and protection of human rights was no longer in conflict with the sovereignty and nonintervention norms so deeply revered by the council. Further, Security Council members described Kuwait, Turkey, and Iran as the proper referents of sovereignty in this case and not Iraq. Thus, it was the threat to regional security and the sovereignty of neighbor states posed by Iraq’s violation of international human rights norms, and not human rights norms themselves, that enabled the passage of Resolution 688.

Despite the largely instrumental application of human rights norms in Security Council Resolution 688, their inclusion had profound, if unintended, effects on the meaning of state sovereignty and the legitimate purpose of military force. In May 1991 the United States’ representative to the Security Council, Thomas Pickering, drew attention to changing normative expectations: “The response to the plight of the Kurds suggests a shift in world opinion towards a re-balancing of the claims of sovereignty and those of extreme humanitarian need. This is good news since it means we are moving closer to deterring genocide and aiding its victims. However, it also means we have much careful thinking to do about the nature of, and the limitations upon, intervention to carry out humanitarian assistance programs where States refuse, in pursuit of ‘policies of repression,’ to give permission to such assistance.”⁹² Similarly, UN secretary-general Pérez de Cuéllar wrote in his 1991 report to the General Assembly that the ability of states to hide their human rights abuses behind the shield of state sovereignty was diminishing: “It is now increasingly felt that the principle of non-interference within the essential domestic jurisdiction of States cannot be regarded as a protective barrier behind which human rights could be massively or systematically violated with impunity.”⁹³ Security Council action in Iraq ushered in a new normative context where human rights norms were growing in their international legitimacy and changing the meaning of state sovereignty and by extension the legitimate purpose of military force.

Conclusions

The Iraq case demonstrates that Security Council unity around a common causal story (in this case an intentional story about interstate aggression) that resonates with an international audience and has the backing of powerful proponents makes the use of military force possible. Justifications for the subsequent coercive response to Iraqi violations of human rights illustrate the growing legitimacy of human rights norms and their ability to shape UNSC decision making alongside considerations of national and international security interests and other powerful international norms such as sovereignty and nonintervention. Resolution 688 marked a fundamental shift in council behavior—the linkage of human rights norms to the maintenance of international security and the use of enforcement measures to curtail human rights violations being perpetrated by a state member of the United Nations against its own people when it negatively affected the security and stability of neighboring states.

Defining the effects of human rights violations as an international security threat was a radical departure from previous Security Council behavior, yet the council sought to maintain its commitment to existing Westphalian conceptions of sovereignty and nonintervention norms. The UNSC was able to promote human rights and protect state sovereignty simultaneously because Iraqi sovereignty had been temporarily suspended and because its referents for sovereign authority were Kuwait, Iran, and Turkey. Human rights mattered to the Security Council in 1991 but largely because their violation had negative consequences for other sovereign states. Most Security Council members articulated an instrumental conception of human rights—they were a means to some other end (international peace and security) rather than an end in themselves. Yet the instrumental adoption of human rights norms by the Security Council created precedent and a political opening for members who believe that the gross and systematic human rights violations warrant Security Council attention. The Security Council response to the situation of Iraq demonstrates that human rights norms and sovereignty norms are coevolving. Ideas about human rights, combined with the Security Council response to Iraqi repression, altered the meaning of sovereignty and introduced a new possibility for the legitimate use of military force—enforcement action in defense of human rights. The passage of Resolution 688 created a precedent for future Security Council humanitarian intervention that would be exercised in Somalia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, and Libya.