What is it about?

The United Nations has intervened in some humanitarian crises but not others. To explain this variation, this paper compares the UN's response to more than 30 humanitarian crises after the end of the Cold War, using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The findings show that combination of four factors matters: (1) the extent of a humanitarian crisis, (2) the strength of spillover effects to neighboring countries, (3) the military strength of the target state, and (4) the level of previous involvement of the UN in a crisis.

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Why is it important?

Whether or not strong the UN intervenes in a crisis affects the legitimacy of the organization. It also has practical consequences for decisionmakers in national and international institutions, for humanitarian organizations that operate in crisis areas, and, of course, for the populations affected by humanitarian emergencies around the world

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This page is a summary of: Paths to intervention, Journal of Peace Research, July 2015, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0022343315585847.
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