As the Cold War began to wind down in the early '90s, former colonies were besieged by a string of humanitarian crises that killed millions of people and forced many millions more to leave their homes and livelihoods. A cruel paradox was revealed: just as the concept of “Responsibility to Protect” human rights was challenging the principle of “State Sovereignty”, no state with the capacity to do so was actually willing to intervene in a crisis based solely on humanitarian grounds.
This book takes a unique and comprehensive look at how the international community, led by the US, responded to ten humanitarian crises of the last decade and how major media outlets played a role in influencing (or failing to influence) action. Crises examined include Liberia, East Timor, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Angola, Haiti, and the Congo. Soderlund and Briggs apply the same analytic method to each case to discover why the international community was unwilling, time and time again, to address this new brand of conflict that appeared at the time.