The Thin Blue Line

The idea that we should ‘do something’ to help those suffering in far-off places is the main impulse driving those who care about human rights. Yet from Kosovo to Iraq military interventions have gone disastrously wrong. <i>The Thin Blue Line</i> describes how in the last twenty years humanitarianism has emerged as a multibillion-dollar industry that has played a leading role in defining humanitarian crises and shaping the foreign policy of Western governments and the United Nations. Drawing on his own experience of working in over a dozen conflict and post-conflict zones Foley shows how the growing influence of international law has been used to override the sovereignty of the poorest countries in the world.