NATO's Armed Intervention in Kosovo : An Analysis of the Just War Principles of Jus Ad Bellum and Jus In Bello

State fragmentation, resulting from incessant intra-state conflicts and political crisis characterizes the post-Cold War times. These conflict eruptions have noticeably deepened misery and underdevelopment in the affected areas as they inflict human suffering through death, destruction of human livelihoods, constant displacement and insecurity. As these conflicts surge, particularly in the case of Kosovo, the imperative to halt the internecine killings and carnage sparked off the transformation of NATO, originally an alliance and military regional body, into the newly assigned role of peacekeeping. The key argument presented by NATO was that the Serbian government under Milosevic had caused a humanitarian emergency in Kosovo, which was interpreted as a threat to international peace. The US and its allies insisted that compelling humanitarian considerations prompted them to act, despite unauthorization from the UN Security Council. The Serbian authorities were accused of indulging in genocidal acts against the ethnic Albanian population of the province. This move had for a long time provoked intellectual debate and contention among scholars and academics on the legal justification and the effectiveness of the intervention. The question that requires interrogation is: What was the justification for NATO’s intervention in Kosovo? In its bid to offer a critical assessment of the NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, this paper adopts as its framework for analysis the Just War Theory which features the elements of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Weighed in this theoretical scale, the finding of this research is that NATO’s intervention in Kosovo leaves much to be desired. Among other flaws of the intervention is that it was based on sham humanitarianism, grossly violated the United Nations Articles 53(1), 2(4) and 2(7), and set a wrong international precedent