DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2015.v03i04.018

Pages: 938-945

United States intervention in regional conflicts under the auspices of the United Nations is most times deemed to be undertaken for humanitarian reasons – checking human rights abuses, strengthening democratic experiments among other laudable objectives. Examples in Africa have shown that such interventions are selective, short lived and most times ambiguous. Rather than resolve conflicts, interventions have escalated the conflicts, and resulted into political instability with far reaching negative consequences to the nation-states. This paper has examined NATO intervention in libya’s crisis of 2011. It is shown that intervention worsened the human rights situation, produced rival militant groups, loss of more lives and chaos that culminated into a bifurcated Libya. NATO intervention enabled regime change without corresponding institutions to maintain order and stability in Libya. Humanitarian intervention should improve the dignity of life, restore happiness and create opportunities where non existed.