France, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect

Since the end of the Cold War, the protection of human life has been a key priority for the international community. While France has played an important, though at times controversial, role in these humanitarian efforts - steering debates at the United Nations and standing in opposition to conflicts worldwide - its contribution has been overlooked and its long-standing commitment to human protection underestimated. Eglantine Staunton offers a compelling corrective to the prevailing assumptions about France's humanitarian record, examining its relationship to the dominant international principles and norms of human protection, such as humanitarian intervention in the 1990s and the Responsibility to Protect in the 2000s. Combining case studies of the interventions in Rwanda, Kosovo and Iraq, among others, and interviews with key actors including Gareth Evans and Bernard Kouchner, Staunton's innovative theoretical framework offers a valuable tool for understanding the interplay between domestic and international norms.