Should foreign countries intervene in civil wars?

As the nightly television news makes clear, the world is experiencing a period of revolutionary upheaval. Entrenched regimes have been toppled throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Refugees from civil wars in Syria and Iraq are seeking shelter in neighbouring countries. Russia is flexing its muscles in Ukraine and beyond. The emergence of ISIS seems set to redraw existing borders.

These dramatic events have also challenged the foundations of the traditional international legal order governing foreign intervention in civil wars. The awarding of a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship to Professor Anne Orford offers a response to that challenge.

Professor Orford, the Michael D Kirby Professor of International Law at Melbourne Law School, has been awarded the 2015 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellowship. She will use the $A2.5 million research grant to explore the complex legal issues surrounding intervention by external actors in civil wars.

“As current debates about the legality of interventions in Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine make clear, the question of whether and under what conditions outside actors can intervene in civil wars is an urgent one,” says Professor Orford.

“This project will develop the new legal concepts and frameworks that are needed to respond to the fundamental challenges posed by growing foreign involvement in civil wars.”

Professor Orford argues that since the early 1990s the meaning and scope of the non-intervention principle has been unsettled by the emergence of norms and practices designed to protect civilians and fight terrorism, and by increasing economic and political integration.

“There has been enormous pressure to rethink the bases on which external actors can intervene in support of rebels or other parties to a civil war,” she says.

“That pressure has come from militarily powerful states like Russia, the UK, and the US, but also from aid organisations seeking access to war zones on humanitarian grounds, refugee advocates seeking to support internally displaced people, and even multinational corporations seeking to protect their investments and their employees.

“Often international lawyers are asked to offer legal responses in a very rushed and ad hoc fashion as a new crisis erupts. The funding of this major five-year project will provide me and my team with the much-needed time and resources to evaluate whether and if so, how, the law needs to change.”

As a researcher and writer on humanitarian intervention and the transformation of international security for over 20 years, and one whose work has had a major influence internationally, Professor Orford is ideally placed to carry out this project. She has held distinguished visiting positions at leading universities worldwide, given plenary addresses at the most significant conferences in her field, and been invited by governments and international organisations to present her research all over the world.

“It’s a great privilege and a huge responsibility to have been provided with this opportunity,” says Professor Orford.

“Development of a legal framework that can better address this new situation is vital.

“The stakes are high for those who live in countries engulfed by wars, for refugees seeking protection, and for countries like Australia deciding whether they can and should provide humanitarian or military assistance.”

As the holder of the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Fellowship, Professor Orford is provided with additional funding to undertake an ambassadorial role to promote women in research, alongside her own research program. She will use the funding to establish a program of workshops, master classes and visiting fellowships for outstanding female early career researchers in international law and related fields.

Professor Orford is the third University of Melbourne woman researcher to have been recognised by these awards. Professor Leann Tilley was awarded the 2015 Georgina Sweet Australian Fellowship to measure, model and manipulate complex cellular systems of the malaria parasite to develop new ways of combatting the disease in both livestock and humans.

And Melbourne historian, Joy Damousi, became the University of Melbourne’s first woman – and the Faculty of Arts’ first ever – Australian Laureate Fellow when she was given the award in 2014.

law.unimelb.edu.au/melbourne-law-school