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United States, the Soviet Union, and at least eleven other states petitioned the UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, to investigate Iraq’s possible use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds, but both Iraq and neighboring Turkey, where large numbers of Kurdish refugees had fled, rejected the UN’s request for access to Kurdish survivors.³ The UN deferred to the sovereign authority of both states and refrained from further interference in their domestic affairs—no formal condemnation of Iraq by the Security Council was forthcoming.

      In contrast, during that same period, Iraq also was accused of using chemical weapons in its ongoing war with Iran. On 26 August 1988, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 620 (1988) condemning the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War, which violated the 1925 Geneva Protocol and Security Council Resolution 612. Though both Resolutions 620 and 612 condemned use of chemical weapons in interstate warfare, neither resolution criticized or even mentioned Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against its domestic population. Yet three years later in March 1991, army troops loyal to Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his elite Republican Guard used helicopter gunships, tanks, and artillery to indiscriminately attack northern Iraqi Kurds and Muslim Shi’a in the south. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis panicked, fled the country, and became stranded in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey and along the border with Iran, creating a humanitarian crisis. This time, only one month later, the UNSC passed Resolution 688 defining the effects of Iraq’s human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security, and France, the UK, and the U.S. enforced a no-fly zone in northern Iraq to prevent the Iraqi regime from attacking the Kurdish people. Between 1988 and 1991, there was a dramatic shift in Security Council responses to Iraqi government attacks against its own population. In 1988 the council concerned itself solely with interstate threats and aggression, but by 1991 it began considering the domestic practices within states and their effects on international peace and security. Human rights considerations lacked legitimacy in Security Council deliberations in 1988, but a series of decisions in 1991 allowed for the limited consideration of human rights concerns in the Iraq case with the unintended consequence of both legitimizing human rights norms as a subject of council debate and laying the groundwork for future humanitarian intervention. This initial deviation in Security Council practice was made possible by a dramatically changed historical and political context and contingencies specific to the Iraq case.

      In August 1990, Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait. Within hours, the UNSC held an emergency meeting and passed Resolution 660, which condemned the Iraqi invasion and demanded an immediate and complete withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait. This was how the Security Council was designed to work—to respond quickly and decisively to acts of aggression. Yet during the Cold War, the council had rarely exercised its enforcement powers under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.⁴ In fact, only 7 percent of all Chapter VII resolutions passed by the Security Council between 1946 and 2002 occurred during the Cold War, which means an astonishing 93 percent were adopted after 1989.⁵ Indeed, it was the Security Council’s perceived ability to respond effectively, and in concert, to Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait in August 1990 that ushered in a new era of optimism about the role of the UNSC in maintaining international peace and security. During formal meetings, council members celebrated the newfound international climate of cooperation among them.⁶ The broader UN membership believed that the Security Council was finally beginning to function as originally intended, and expectations grew that the UNSC would now maintain international peace and security by quickly and decisively responding to aggression and protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of weak states.⁷

      Studying the case of Iraq is an important starting point for a study of Security Council humanitarian intervention because prior to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, human rights discourse was considered inappropriate for council discussion. Its inclusion in council debates in 1991 and 1992 had dramatic, if unintended, political effects. Because discourse has the power to both create and foreclose policy options, incorporating human rights norms into formal debates about state sovereignty and international security fundamentally altered the council’s view of the legitimate purpose of military force.

      International problem solving relies on problem construction. Policymaking in the Security Council—as in other policymaking forums—is a discursive struggle over the appropriate way to classify political events, the boundaries of problem categories, and the conceptual framing of issues with a view to creating a shared meaning that motivates decision makers to act.⁸ Members of the UNSC united quickly around an intentional story to characterize the war. The intentional story described Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as an external aggression against an independent and sovereign state member of the United Nations—a clear violation of Article 2.7 of the UN Charter. Clarity about the cause and character of the conflict, combined with widespread agreement that the Iraqi regime was the perpetrator of international crimes against Kuwait and its people, made it possible for the Security Council to swiftly reverse the aggression. An unprecedented level of unity persisted for the duration of Operation Desert Storm—the war authorized by the UNSC to reverse Iraq’s occupation. This unity combined with the military success of the operation created a political context in which the UNSC could reexamine the legitimate purpose of military force in international relations, including the use of Chapter VII enforcement powers to address the cross-border impact of a regional humanitarian crisis. The documentary record on Iraq also demonstrates that the arguments that international actors make about the cause and character of conflict and the source of sovereign authority matter because they shape the likelihood that military force will or will not be used in defense of human rights.

      The extraordinary maltreatment of the Iraqi people by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of his defeat by coalition forces caused an unprecedented humanitarian disaster as millions of Iraqi Kurds and Shi’as fled across Iraq’s borders into neighboring Iran and Turkey.⁹ This humanitarian crisis, occurring during a traditional interstate war, created a context in which it was possible for Security Council members to consider the relationship between human rights and international security. During formal deliberations, the UNSC incorporated Secretariat briefings on Iraq’s domestic human rights situation—breaking with past practice that excluded such considerations. Because the effects of Saddam Hussein’s human rights violations were threatening both regional peace and security and the sovereignty of Turkey and Iran, the UNSC passed Resolution 688, which condemned Iraqi violations of human rights and demanded international access to Iraq’s population and territory. The passage of Resolution 688 was a watershed moment—it was the first Security Council resolution to define domestic human rights violations as a threat to international peace and security because of its trans-border effects. In part, Resolution 688, “condemns the repression of the Iraqi civilian population in many parts of Iraq, including most recently in the Kurdish-populated areas, the consequences of which threaten international peace and security in the region.”¹⁰

      By dictating the terms of the Iraqi government’s treatment of its own population and curtailing its freedom of movement, Resolution 688 challenged the traditional meaning of sovereignty by interfering in the internal affairs of the Iraqi state and by linking minimal standards of human rights protection to the meaning of legitimate sovereign authority. This interference was limited to Iraq, however, and only became possible because Iraq’s own sovereignty had been temporarily suspended by the UN after it had violated core Charter principles. The use of military force against Iraq was an unquestionably straightforward exercise of Chapter VII to reverse international aggression. The cease-fire imposed by the UN “was one of the most intrusive since the Second World War,” demonstrating the seriousness of Iraq’s transgression of international norms.¹¹ Absent this context, it is highly unlikely that Iraq’s treatment of its marginalized and minority populations would have garnered Security Council attention at all, let alone intrusive enforcement action to stop it. Widespread agreement about Iraq’s pariah status, the suspension of Iraqi sovereignty, and the impact on security of the Iraqi government’s human rights violations together created an environment in which a once impermissible practice—the linking of human rights and international security by the UNSC—became possible. Changing council behavior marked a new period of international openness to debating the meaning of sovereignty and the relationship between protecting human rights and maintaining international peace and security. Successful military action

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