45 Humanitarian intervention Humanitarian crises or disasters that require humanitarian intervention fall into two broad categories - manmade disasters including armed conflicts and wars, and natural disasters such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, and disease epidemics.
Humanitarian intervention is often complex and the scale unfamiliar.
The primary objectives of any humanitarian intervention, however, must include saving lives, reducing suffering, and helping victims return to self-sufficiency. Humanitarian interventions may be military or non-military in nature, and possibly a combination of the two. Conflicts, often the results of persistent human rights violations through oppression, inequality, discrimination, and poverty, are among the commonest cause of humanitarian disasters worldwide. Placing military forces between rival groups can and do prevent armed conflict and violence, play peacekeeping roles, and can enforce peace. Unacceptable as it may seem, and as a last resort, humanitarian military intervention forces may be used to fight the forces of aggression and oppression, in order to save civilians from death and suffering.