In his inaugural address at the UNO General Convention, the Secretary-General Kofi Annan has preannounce a new age in the “humanitarian intervention “: in the wake of the OTAN's operation in Kosovo and of the blue berets landing in East Timor, he beard that “a great number of populations would need a continuous and effective engagement by the international community in order to help them to put an end to the cycles of violence they undergo “.
It concerns without any doubt noble targets, on line with the trend to not tolerate anymore wide scale violation of human rights neither inside sovereign states. But if the Annan's recommendation would be taken to the letter, if the UNO must really intervene anytime a minority were persecuted or the peril of a genocide were outlined, maybe we would set the tone of a phase of unprecedented 'world disorder'. 
So it's convenient get back down-to-earth and examine which are the limits of a policy that if applied methodically, would revolution anyway the fixed principles of the International Right.
The first and main obstacle to the humanitarian intervention is anyhow constituted by the structure itself of the UNO. In the vision of Annan, it's on their charge, and only theirs, to decide to go into action, to join the required forces and manage expeditions. 
The most they can do is to delegate the task to a regional organization, but the method followed in Kosovo for which, being impossible to reach timely the consent of the Security Council, the OTAN took autonomously the initiative, must not be repeated anymore. 
This rule, unexceptionable in terms of right, involves nevertheless a range of very strict limitations. In the Security Council, the organ that must deliberate any intervention and plant its modality, seat fifteen countries: the five permanent members - United States, Great Britain, France, Russia China - all having right of veto, and other ten, by turns. If the council reformation will pass, the permanent members could become even ten and the total get up to twenty-five. 
It's self-evident the trouble to find, within an assembly alike, the required consent to start off the intervention machine. 
If, for Bosnia, at the end it has been found an agreement, for the Kosovo it was impossible; and it was possible to launch the expedition to East Timor only because the green light allowed by Indonesia removed the objection by China.
The “interventionists” ask in a loud voice the change of the UNO Chart and the abolition of the right of veto: but since that must be put in act by the means of the consent of the powers that are interested to keep the status quo, it concerns mere utopias.
Also in the situations the council ends finding an agreement, the UNO arrives in general too late to prevent the tragedy and it remains only to limit damages: Bosnia, Kosovo, Timor, with their numberless victims teach that. 
The Security Council does not have on its disposal an own army, and it must entrust anytime the good will of the countries that, for geopolitical reasons, are interested the most at the operation - but the military and financial resources on disposal are on depletion since the humanitarian interventions requires long term engagements. 
For the OTAN troupes the first engagement has been of three years, but in the chancelleries nobody believes to succeed in restoring security conditions within 2002 in order to allow their withdrawal. At East-Timor the blue berets will stay even more.
Really the UNO missions tend to turn into real open-end international mandates. After pacifying the region, infrastructure must be re-built, the country must be equipped with new ones, and the basis of a civil life in common must be restored. Often, as in Kosovo, all that must be carried out in absence of exact indications about future, that is without knowing if the final purpose of the temporary administration is the restore of the sovereignty of the country (in the case in point the ex Yugoslavia) to which it has been temporarily taken away or the constitution of an independent state.
That's why, notwithstanding Annan's good intentions and the working out of a new doctrine about interference into sovereign states internal affairs, the perspectives for the future are not encouraging. 
There are also cases for which is objectively difficult to state if the reaction of the constituted powers to a revolt is legitimated by the circumstances or it emerges as a real abuse of power requiring an international sanction.
Let's make some examples. 
Africa is plenty of tribal conflicts causing millions dead, refugees and provoking untellable suffering for old, women and children, categories the UNO Chart deserves special protection. 
The massacre by the Moslem fundamentalists of Khartoum of the Christian and animist populations in Sudan must be stopped in the south Sudan; than it must be brought the peace in Angola, torn for twenty years by a war started under the shield of the clash East-West, but turned in the meanwhile into an endless tribal conflict; Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo, set over last years of brutal as well as senseless civil wars must be pacified and re-built; it must go once more in Somalia. 
But why must USA and Europe charge these endemic crisis, bringing the clock of Africa back to a hundred years ago, and that surely are not destabilizing, global level? Who pays, who supplies troupes, who has interest in laying hands on so complex situations, and furthermore so hopeless in succeeding?  Nobody, obviously.
If Africa is a disaster Asia is a real a powder keg. The last years events have induced many Europeans to become fond of the destiny of the Kurdish population, 25 millions people searching a nation, divided into Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, whose rights are trampled upon systematically. 
Numberless the appeals, the motions, the proposal to give finally a homeland to Kurdish. 
But the same politicians that claim for an independent Kurdistan and thunder against the Turley, condemn the work done of the Unite States in Iraq, that certainly was worth to create an area where the oppressed are sheltered from the Saddam's persecutions.
On the other side, in the no far Cecenia, Russians have killed 80.000 persons in the vain attempt to submit the rebel republic and now are moving with the same brutal methods against the Moslem rebels in Daghestan. 
The situation is not, neither in Right terms, very different from that pushing the OTAN to bomb Belgrade and occupy the Kosovo. 
And instead the opinion, rather unanimous of the chancelleries, is that Russia has the right to defend the integrity of its own territory and the duty to fight against a movement employing terrorism to achieve its own targets.
What about the western attitude as regard to the Tibet matter? It is true that the occupation of this country by China dates back to almost 50 years ago, it is true that the more blood repressions belong to the Mao period, but also in early time Peking has surely not joked. Instead the international community mainly interested to integrate China in the economic world system turns prudishly the face.
The truth is that it does not exist any code in humanitarian interventions because the Realpolitik does not allow it and will never allow making it out. 
They will go on employing, according to circumstances, not a double standard but even, triple or quadruple. If the classic colonial age, as expression of the European expansionism, has ended since time, colonialism survives intact in the third world, under the shape of oppression of minorities by central governments: see Indonesia, Philippine, Sudan, and even Mexico. 
Facing all these situations is evidently impossible. Some of them will be faced sometimes, following more the stimulus of the media and the mood of the moment than humanitarian and political objective evaluations. 
For the oppressed populations to achieve an UNO intervention will be as win in a lottery, provided that these interventions really succeed in bettering their situation.