Three years into Israel’s genocide, ecocide, scholasticide, and urbicide in Gaza, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, including over 20,000 children, the catastrophe has extended across the region. Sixteen months after the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, thousands of U.S. and Israeli strikes have caused extensive civilian casualties and destruction; ACLED records approximately 3,700 such strikes during the 2026 war alone, following hundreds of Israeli strikes during the June 2025 invasion. In Lebanon, the United Nations has documented Israeli attacks affecting civilians and medical personnel, alongside damage to essential infrastructure. Israeli airstrikes have killed thousands, displaced more than a million Lebanese, and devastated homes, health facilities, roads, bridges, and other civilian infrastructure. By June 2026, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health had reported 3,783 deaths and nearly 11,700 injuries since the March escalation.
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These catastrophes raise questions not only about the human cost of war, but also about the discourse through which violence is normalized. Human rights, democracy, civilization, liberal values, and the protection of peoples are often used to legitimize war, yet these principles are not applied consistently. Across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the selective application of humanitarianism and international law – from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya to Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran – reveals a persistent tension between universal claims about human rights and an international order shaped by geopolitical interests, (neo)colonial/imperial structures, and the unequal treatment of human life. This tension provides the starting point for revisiting thoughts first expressed in a prior article I wrote in 2015: A Postcolonial Critique of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). A postcolonial critique does not deny the need to protect populations from mass atrocities. It asks instead how this responsibility is defined, who is authorized to exercise it, and whose interests it ultimately serves. Hence, the key question is who has the responsibility to protect whom, under what conditions, through what means, and toward what political ends? The critique, in other words, is not directed at the universal principle of human protection itself, but at the selective, paternalistic, and militarized ways in which powerful states put it into practice.
R2P emerged from the dilemma of reconciling state sovereignty with the protection of populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Its central premise was that sovereignty involves responsibility, meaning states must protect their populations, while the international community has a role when states clearly fail to do so. Yet the gap between this commitment and its implementation, or between theory and practice, is problematic. The selective enforcement of international law, shaped by realpolitik and the UNSC veto system, continues to determine which crises get attention and which are ignored. The experience of the MENA region (the Middle East and North Africa) reveals these inconsistencies and contradictions. Interventions carried out in the name of humanitarian protection have often weakened public institutions and civil society, intensified sectarian conflict, displaced populations, and deepened dependence on external powers. In other cases, crimes against humanity have met with limited to no international action when the interests of powerful states or their allies are at stake.
This article offers a decolonial critique of humanitarian interventio and advances a more critical concept of ‘Responsibility for Justice (R4J)’ in the MENA region. Informed by Mamdani (2009, 276), it asks who protects whom, under what conditions, through what means, and toward what ends? This requires shifting the focus from a presumed right to intervene toward a just, people-centered approach based on the consistent application of international law, human security, people’s agency, and the empowering of civil society. Protection should not become a justification for subordination.
The Promise of R2P and the Problem of Power Politics: Revisiting Theory in Practice
R2P marks a significant stage in the evolution of the liberal doctrine of humanitarian intervention. Its intellectual roots lie in the development of international legal responses to genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the expansion of Chapter VII practices after the Cold War, and, ultimately, the adoption of the doctrine at the 2005 UN World Summit. R2P emerged partly in response to the international community’s failures in Rwanda and Srebrenica. Its central aim was to reconcile two principles often treated as competing: state sovereignty and the protection of human rights.
R2P rests on three pillars: the responsibility to prevent, to react, and to rebuild. Prevention requires attention to the political and socioeconomic conditions, or root causes, that give rise to mass violence. The second pillar concerns reaction. When populations face mass atrocities, the international community may resort to political, economic, and legal measures, with military force considered a last resort. The third pillar, rebuilding, underlines that international responsibility does not end with intervention. Reconstruction, reconciliation, institutional development, and the restoration of political and social life must also be part of the response. R2P’s promise, then, extends beyond military action because it seeks to move from state-centered security toward human security. Its stated ambitions are to “put people first” and to understand sovereignty as responsibility. The difficulty lies in what happens when this promise meets the realities of power politics.
A decolonial critique does not reject universal human rights; it questions how selectively they are applied. Violations by powerful states or their allies may escape meaningful accountability, while weaker states face external pressure in the name of human rights. Furthermore, humanitarian discourse can reproduce colonial structures, casting Western powers as protectors or saviours while portraying populations in the Global South as passive recipients of their intervention. Edward Said’s Orientalism and Mamdani’s postcolonial approaches provide a useful framework for understanding such paternalism, which risks reducing citizens from political agents with rights of their own to recipients of protection, thereby undermining self-determination and encouraging dependency. Supporting struggles for freedom must not be confused with interventions that weaken the political agency of the very people they claim to protect. Moreover, a decolonial critique reminds us that, in practice, the three pillars of R2P have often been reduced to one, meaning privileging military intervention at the expense of prevention and post-conflict rebuilding.
Iraq: Power Politics and Punishment
Iraq is a classic case that exposes a huge gap between humanitarian rhetoric and the catastrophe that followed in practice. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), the international community failed to respond to mass atrocities, including Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iranian forces and Kurdish civilians. The March 1988 attack on Halabja killed approximately 5,000 Kurds, yet major Western powers continued to support Iraq. But when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 the UN Security Council quickly authorized military action. The sharp different responses to these two crises reveal the extent to which power politics determines action and geopolitics overcomes norms.
A 2025 study in The Lancet Global Health estimates that unilateral Western sanctions, mostly imposed by the United States, caused more than 28 million deaths between 1971 and 2021, an average of approximately 564,000 a year. Iraq’s comprehensive sanctions after 1990 illustrate the devastating human consequences of such policies. They contributed to severe socioeconomic crises and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, including at least 227,000 children under five. These consequences also point to the relationship between sanctions and the legal concept of extermination as a crime against humanity. Economic sanctions weakened Iraq’s middle class and civil society, undermining social forces who would have contributed to civil resistance and bottom-up change to move from Saddam Hussein’s regime toward democracy.
The 2003 U.S.-led invasion war was not authorized by the UN Security Council but was justified through unfounded claims about weapons of mass destruction, the regime’s links to Al-Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks. Democracy promotion and humanitarian arguments also became part of the justification for regime change. The war, however, brought war crimes in Fallujah, crimes against humanity at Abu Ghraib, institutional collapse, sectarian violence, mass displacement, the rise of ISIS, and widespread destruction, documented by Iraq Body Count and UNHCR. Rather than facilitating a democratic transition rooted in Iraqi society, the invasion destroyed the social and institutional foundations necessary for democratization.
The Iraqi case suggests that both the local dictator and the global hegemon committed crimes against humanity and war crimes. The local dictator and the victims, the Iraqi people, were punished, but the global hegemon remains immune from prosecution. The main victims of the sanctions regime and the war were ordinary people, whose lives, prosperity, dignity, and agency were eroded under a new system of semi-trusteeship and neocolonialism.
Palestine: Right to Punish?
If Iraq demonstrates the catastrophe of military intervention, Palestine shows the crisis of double standards and the selective application of humanitarian principles. Clear evidence suggests that Israel has failed to live up to its legal obligations as an occupying power to protect civilians in the occupied territories, and the United States has repeatedly used its Security Council veto to block resolutions critical of Israel. The international community, however, has consistently failed to protect Palestinian lives; instead, Palestinians have been subject to continued occupation and collective punishment.
The Gaza Genocide has exposed this double standard more clearly than ever. The devastating humanitarian toll in Gaza since 2023, together with South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, could have provided a basis for implementing R2P. International institutions, courts, human rights organizations, and individual states have raised legal concerns and called for action over the ongoing genocide and earlier violations and war crimes. Palestine shows a huge gap between the supposed universality of humanitarianism in theory and its arbitrary application in practice. The Palestinian case makes clear that international norms are most often subordinated to the harsh realities of power politics and hegemonic interests.
Libya: Right to Prevail?
In 2011, UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized measures to protect Libyan civilians, including a no-fly zone, while explicitly excluding “a foreign occupation force of any kind in any part of Libyan territory.” The implementation of R2P, however, differed from its authorized principles. As NATO’s bombing campaign continued, concerns grew that the mission was moving beyond civilian protection toward regime change. Benis (2011) argues that Western powers showed little interest in a negotiated settlement, pointing to NATO’s refusal to allow an African Union delegation to fly to Tripoli. The New York Times, reporting on March 20, 2011, also noted that Libyan tanks on the road to Benghazi were bombed while retreating rather than advancing. For Mamdani, the intervention echoed the 2003 Iraq War, which he argues had been planned by U.S. neoconservatives in advance. Libya raised an important distinction between authorizing an intervention and implementing it. Although the UN Security Council authorized to protect civilians, the West/NATO determined how the intervention carried out, turning it into a campaign for regime change.
Furthermore, the political economy of war deserves close attention, via three aspects. First, the freezing of Libya’s foreign assets under UNSCR 1973, including tens of billions of dollars held in the U.S. and Europe, raises questions about the relationship between humanitarianism and the money trail. As Falk (2011) notes, the U.S., France, and the UK pushed for the release of billions of dollars in frozen Libyan state assets as “oil companies and their government sponsors” scrambled to gain an “inside track” in post-Gaddafi Libya. Second, Mamdani (2011) reminds us that how war serves the interests of the military-industry complex, as new weapons can be tested in the battlefields for use in future wars and to support the arms market. Third, the more Libya’s infrastructure was destroyed, Mamdani argued, the less room its post-war government would have to exercise meaningful sovereignty. Iraq and Afghanistan offered similar examples of fragile sovereignty where regime change marked the beginning of a period of dependency and socio-political crisis.
Syria: When Humanitarianism Feeds into Proxy War
The Syrian uprising in 2011 began as a domestic demand for freedom, but it quickly became a site of regional and global rivalry, turning the movement into a proxy war. Russia and Iran supported the Syrian regime, while the United States, European states, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others supported different Islamist and secular opposition forces. Geopolitical rivalries among major powers, combined with the bitter experience of the Libyan intervention, hindered actions to stop atrocities.
Worse, external powers’ support for opposing sides intensified militarization of the conflict, contributing to mass killing, torture, displacement, refugee flows, infrastructure destruction, chemical weapons attacks, sectarianism, and the rise of ISIS and other extremist groups. The militarization of the uprising weakened democratic forces and strengthened extremism and sectarianism, and prolonged the crisis at the cost of Syrian lives.
The international community’s best alternative would have been to facilitate inclusive negotiations, provide humanitarian assistance, apply political pressure, and support non-violent civil resistance rather than contribute to a prolonged proxy war.
Iran, Imperial War and the Myth of Exceptionalism
The Israeli-U.S. war of aggression against Iran, which began in June 2025, was framed as saving Iranians from an authoritarian regime and bringing democracy and development to the country. At the same time, President Trump and his administration have repeatedly threatened to annihilate Iran or send it back to the Stone Age. Both Israel and the United States have committed war crimes, including attacks that killed civilians, among them more than a hundred schoolgirls, as well as the destruction of educational, historical, medical, and other civilian institutions.
Iran possesses a strong sense of national identity, considerable socio-cultural cohesion, and a large, educated, population. For these reasons, some have argued that Iran could survive external military intervention without experiencing the fate of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, or Syria. While there is some truth to this argument, it also calls for caution. Iran has fought back and resisted U.S.-Israeli plan for regime change, but these powers may still pursue their imperial goals through other means. Moreover, a rich historical legacy cannot shield a country from the devastating consequences of war, just as a strong national identity cannot prevent institutional collapse. Sociocultural cohesion cannot rule out economic collapse, sociopolitical fragmentation, the militarization of the public sphere, or the consolidation of authoritarian rule.
Iran is no exception to the dynamics of imperial war. Neither a U.S.-Israeli war of aggression, even when presented as a struggle for freedom and democracy, nor public anger at the ruling authorities will bring about democracy. Democratic transition requires homegrown organization, credible leadership, an inclusive discourse for mobilization, and, above all, peace and prosperity. Military intervention and economic sanctions can make these harder to achieve. War and economic sanctions may weaken the state, but they also undermine civil society, deepen poverty, erode the middle class, and give the state grounds to accuse dissenters of collaborating with foreign powers. Opposition to authoritarianism and opposition to foreign military intervention are not mutually exclusive; both are ethically justified and politically necessary.
From R2P to R4J
R2P raises an important question: what should the international community do when states fail to protect their own people? Another question is equally important: How can international community protect people without undermining their political agency, reproducing violence, or reinforcing existing inequalities in global power structure? The challenge is not to reject global responsibility, but to rethink what it means in practice. This is where my proposed concept of Responsibility for Justice (R4J) is useful. R4J starts from the premise that protecting people should take priority over the interests of powerful states, and proceeds via a sevenfold framework:
Prevention must come before intervention. The international community should address the political and socioeconomic root causes/conditions that lead to violence, including occupation, war, and other forms of structural injustice, rather than waiting for atrocities to occur.
Independent international institutions should do more to support civil society. Where governments silence dissent, this can mean providing secure communication tools, supporting independent media, and helping people maintain spaces for civic engagement. Such support can help citizens get around censorship without turning their struggle for democracy into a proxy war.
Comprehensive economic sanctions hurt ordinary people, weaken civil society, and undermine the very social forces needed for democratic change. They most often punish entire populations for the actions of their governments amounting to collective punishment.
International law must be applied consistently. Rules that are enforced against weaker states but set aside when powerful countries or their allies are involved will never generate lasting legitimacy.
The United Nations needs to become more democratic. The Security Council’s veto system exposes a basic contradiction as international norms may be universal in principle, but the power to enforce them is arbitrary and remains in the hands of a few powerful states.
Regional organizations and grass-roots movements must have a greater role. Local societies should not simply be the passive objects of international policy; they should participate in defining what protection means and how it should be achieved.
Humanitarianism must be decolonized, not by abandoning universal human rights for cultural relativism, but by recognizing that genuine universalism must be plural and grounded in diverse societies. The concept of pluriversalism offers one way to make a world in which no hegemonic power claims exclusive authority to define universal values for everyone else.
Conclusion
The history of humanitarian intervention in MENA reveals an international order that speaks the language of universal human protection while reproducing structures of domination and imperial hegemony. The emperor, in this sense, has no clothes. R2P’s implementation has shown how easily the language of human rights can be used to justify military intervention, how intervention can become a means of regime change, and how regime change can leave countries facing instability and dependency. Afghanistan and Iraq reveal the devastating costs of war and coercive sanctions. Palestine exposes the consequences of selective enforcement and the international community’s failure to protect lives. Libya raises questions about the relationship between civilian protection and regime change. Syria shows how external interfering could turn a popular uprising into a proxy war. And Iran demonstrates how appeals to the discourse of human rights and democracy can be instrumentalized in a broader geopolitical struggle. Together, these examples reveal the gap between the universal promise of humanitarianism and the unequal power relations that shape its practice. This history also challenges the paternalistic assumption that societies in the Global South, particularly in MENA, are passive recipients of external political salvation.
As Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Iran’s Saadi, in his vision of “humanity as members of one body” expressed a similar commitment. A pluriversal conception of justice recognizes the plurality of histories and democratic possibilities through which societies pursue their own paths for freedom and dignity. Without such recognition, universalism can become a convenient discourse for disguising domination and subordination as humanitarianism. This means rethinking the concepts of peace, security, protection, sovereignty, people, and democracy, while questioning whose knowledge defines international problems, whose interests shape their solutions, and whose political agency is recognized. As Mignolo’s call for “epistemic disobedience and the decolonial option” suggests, decolonization requires challenging not only unequal institutions but also the epistemic structures that legitimize them. R4J gives priority to preventing violence and supporting civil society over military intervention and imposed regime change. It also places human security above geopolitical interests. Its aim is to support universal human rights while recognizing that societies may follow different paths toward emancipation as participants in determining their own future.
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Mojtaba Mahdavi is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, Canada.