This chapter explores one of the ways in which international legal texts shape the meanings that are made of humanitarian intervention. My focus is on the ways in which such texts understand the causes of security and humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War period. In particular, I am interested in two key assumptions that underpin the arguments in favour of humanitarian intervention. First, state or local leaders or governments are presented as posing the major challenges to human rights and democracy, and humanitarian crises are seen as largely caused by actions and developments initiated and carried out by local or governmental actors or institutions. These actors are usually represented as being driven by forms of premodern tribalism, ethnic tensions and religious factionalism, which are channeled by ruthless political elites into genocidal violence. This provides a motivating factor for intervention – in order to restore order or to guarantee human rights and democracy, military intervention is necessary. International law and the international community are portrayed as the bearers of peace, democracy and human rights to local communities in need of saving. It is this vision, for instance, which underpins the portrayal of the role of the UN in then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's report, An Agenda for Peace: