The Global South contestation narratives and the transformation of military humanitarian interventions in the early 1990s

Abstract

This paper’s main contribution is to the agency of the South in support of the transformation of MHIs in the early 1990s. This is in contradiction to current literature on how the norm emerged after the Cold War. The study shows that strategic narratives used in hundreds of deliberations in the UNSC were used by the South as part of a social interaction that encouraged the transformation of humanitarian norms. This approach reveals that the South was able to support the interventions while overcoming contestation over practices and identities. Therefore, the South created a narrative of a preferred web of practices that was generally aligned with the transformation of MHIs.