The UN’s 2011 Intervention in Libya: the Role of “Human Security”

An analysis of the 2011 international intervention against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, from its justifications to its consequences.

A child carries the Libyan flag during a celebration of the eighth anniversary of the revolution, Libya, Feb. 17, 2019. Picture: REUTERS/Esam Omran Al-Fetori.

Are you familiar with the concept of “human security”?

This notion emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War and was first coined in the UN system by the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report New Dimensions of Human Security.

Its specificities are:

1. To take a people-centered rather than a traditional state-centered approach[1],
2. To aim at providing individuals three main freedoms: from fear, from want and to live in dignity,

It is by drawing on this very notion that the UN Security Council voted in 2011 resolutions 1970 and 1973, authorizing military intervention in Libya in order to “protect civilians and meet their basic needs”.

Indeed, Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya regime was accused of committing atrocities upon its own people, demonstrating in the context of the Arab Spring.

In this article I will put the human security notion into question by wondering to what extent the international community successfully applied the “human security” concept to the…