Humanitarian Intervention Index
A post on Crooked Timber enquiring into exactly how many people Saddam had killed and when reminded me of the necessity of my Humanitarian Intervention Index, which calculates both the desirability of military intervention and the liklihood of it being easy on the military. In other words it is a handy check sheet for the pro-war left, as they like to call themselves. So here it is again.Now, remembering this is based on 2000 human rights' data from The Observer, you can see the results in an Excel file (if it asks for a password just press cancel).
For those without Excel, the top 5 with their HII rating are:
Gambia (5,000)
Sierra Leone (2144)
Guinea Bissau (1964)
Liberia (1282)
Somalia (906)
Now since the Observer data was published things have happened in Sierra Leone and Liberia. So, on the basis of this, the most sensible candidates if you believe in humanitarian military intervention are Gambia, Guinea Bissa and Somalia (followed by Tanzania and Burundi). These have appalling human rights' records and they don't have much military to speak of. Iraq incidentally is 54th, with an HII rating of 13, between Peru and Croatia. China is 79th with an HII of just 0.3.
posted by Matthew @ 2/19/2004 09:00:00 AM
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