Prime Minister Theresa May leaves Downing Street to make a statement to MPs in the House of Commons over her decision to launch air strikes against Syria. Stefan Rousseau/ Press Association. All rights reserved.Theresa May justified the air strikes on Syria last week in humanitarian terms. She is right, of course, to draw our attention to the humanitarian plight of Syrian citizens at the hands of the Syrian regime. But the justification of the strikes under international law is highly questionable and it is very difficult to identify what humanitarian benefits, if any, have been achieved by the strikes.
It is important to expose the hypocrisy of the Government’s humanitarian argument and the dangerous precedent this sets for future military interventions. At the same time, it is essential to ask what can be done to alleviate the suffering in Syria and what a genuine humanitarian intervention might look like.
In his legal opinion, the Attorney General invoked something called the ‘doctrine of humanitarian intervention’. He argued that the government is ‘permitted under international law, on an exceptional basis, to take measures in order to alleviate overwhelming humanitarian suffering. The legal basis for the use of force is humanitarian intervention, which requires three conditions to be met:
