8.2.2        Iraq’s Human Rights Violations

(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)

Although the Iraq regime had earlier had a poor record on human rights, as noted in Resolution 688,[1] there was no large-scale violence against the population in 2003. The situation was not as serious as it had been in Kosovo, for example (7.3.2.2).  An invasion of Iraq could not therefore be justified in terms of humanitarian intervention at that time (and even the Kosovo intervention had not received UN approval).

© PatternsofPower.org, 2014



[1] The text of UN Security Council resolution 688 was available in April 2014 at http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0688.htm.