The core objective of the United Nations is to strive towards peace and security in international community. Recent flows of refugees to Europe have led to wonder how the international community could help both people facing abuses of their fundamental rights, and also European countries to which they are immigrating. However, since 1945, the use of force has been prohibited with no mention of interventions for humanitarian purposes. The question remains, when unauthorised humanitarian intervention as a last resort measure can be justified in a world of jus cogens prohibition of the use of force.

In public international law, new rules of customary law emerge through sufficient State practice and opinio juris, therefore it might turn out that humanitarian interventions will be justified under customary international law. Always when concerned with the protection of human rights, specific criteria shall be drawn in order to prevent abuses. The present book is a master thesis, which is going to answer the question of justifiability of the use of force for humanitarian purposes without the United Nations Security Council approval, drawn from Iraq and Kosovo cases, and evolving customary international law.

"If humanitarian intervention is indeed an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica - to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?" (Kofi Annan, Millennium Report of Secretary-General of the United Nations, 2000)