Vol. XXXVIII / 1 - Studia Moralia

ONLY THE SOVEREIGN MAY DECLARE WAR AND NATO AS WELL 205
The experience 19 of two world-wars 20 underlined the
resolution to affirm the necessity for pacific setttlement of
disputes. The United Nations Organisation – in a sense the
successor in title to the League of Nations – was constituted
partly as a response to this affirmation. The imperative for
decolonization posed a further challenge to the principle that
only the sovereign may declare war. The recognition, respect and
protection of human rights constituted the core of the challenge.
On this basis, humanitarian law recognized, for example, selfdetermination
as permissible ground for declaring war. 21
Similarly, “gross” human rights violation were recognized by
Tanzania under the leadership of Julius Nyerere as permissible
ground for declaring war on Idi Amin’s Uganda. 22 The situation
in the Central African Republic of Emperor Bokassa was also
manifestly a case of “gross” human rights violation. That
Nyerere’s principle was not applied later when a similar
situation arose in Rwanda in the 1990s reflects not the absence
of principle but the lack of political will to apply it consistently.
Thus even before the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo there was
already a precedent in international politics that
“gross”violation of human rights constituted a just cause for
war. Cumulatively, these examples show that it can no longer be
held that only the sovereign, in the narrow sense of the ruler or
designated “Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces” of a
particular state, may declare war. On this basis NATO could
19
Ferencz, B.B., An International Criminal Court, Volume I, Oceana
Publications, Inc.: London 1980, p. I-90.
20
Alston, P., The United Nations and Human Rights, Clarendon Press:
Oxford 1992, p. 1-8.
21
Shaw, M., Title to territory in Africa, Clarendon Press: Oxford 1986, p.
1-3.
22
Akinyemi, A.B., The Organization of African Unity and the concept of
non-interference in internal affairs of member-states, The British Year Book
of International Law, Forty-Sixth Year of Issue, 1975, p. 393. Kunig, P., The
Protection of Human Rights by International Law in Africa, German
Yearbook of International Law Jahrbuch für internationales Recht, Volume
25 1982, p. 142. Alston, P., The United Nations and Human Rights,
Clarendon Press: Oxford 1992, p. 145 and 159