This study launches a systematic inquiry into the nature of the concept of humanitarian intervention, focusing on its primary function of the protection of the endangered civilian populations who find themselves at the grave risk of genocide. This is strengthened by a recollection of selected historical examples of similar events and the responses to them by the international community, empowered by our modern understanding of the principle of state sovereignty, human rights, and anti-genocide legislation. Applying the in-statu-nascendi ontology that accounts for the latest hybridized compartmentalization of various IR-related theories, the author provides a deep ontological inquiry into the nature, origin, and genesis of the idea of humanitarian intervention and opens up a broader debate on the limits of the principle of state sovereignty as well as on the international community's ignorance of some of the most severe cases of human rights abuses around the world.

Joseph Thomas Milburn is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the University of Sofia. He holds an M.A. in Jungian and Post-Jungian Studies from the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and a B.A. (Hons) in English Literature and Philosophy from Newcastle University.