Violence begets violence? : A quantitative analysis of humanitarian military interventions’ effect on human rights violations between 1981-2011

Abstract: This study explores the effects humanitarian interventions have on the human right status in a country. The theoretical standpoint is based on the notion that a perceived lack of accountability and repercussions for crimes committed will function as motivation for local actors to continue the human right violations, or even increase their efforts. Therefore, the working hypothesis of the study is notion that the human right violations will increase because of the presence of a humanitarian intervention. Through the use of the Cingranelli-Richards dataset, an internationally recognized source of quantitative data for human right indicators between 1981 and 2011, an indication on the effect of humanitarian interventions is provided. This is done through a method referred to as Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), commonly used to measure the effect of a specific treatment. The results indicate that the prevalence of physical violations, such as torture and extrajudicial killings, decrease because of the intervention. However, the freedom of freely moving in and out of the country deteriorates following an intervention. The other human rights indicators proved not to be statistically significant meaning that no relationship could be determined. All in all, contrary to the theoretical narrative the assumed lack of repercussions did not provide enough incentive for further increasing human right violations. However, the practical implementations of the results are positive. Because no confirmed relationship apart from in the case of physical rights was proven it means that humanitarian interventions avoid facing a severe argument to cancel the concept which a confirmed relationship would have meant.