Humanitarian intervention is the act in which a state intervenes in the affairs of another state because that state is violating the fundamental human rights of its civilians or because it is in the interests of the intervening state be involved. (Humanitarian, 2008) These interventions are not specifically aimed at violating the sovereignty of a state, but rather their purpose is to protect the fundamental human rights of civilians during civil wars and during crimes against humanity. (Humanitarian, 2008) Realism explains that humanitarian intervention occurred during the genocide in Bosnia but not in Rwanda because, even though it might have been the correct moral action to take, intervention in Rwanda was not in the national interest of other states. Furthermore, there was no humanitarian intervention in the Rwandan genocide because the genocide was not explicitly known. (Hintjens, 1999) On the other hand, humanitarian intervention occurred in Bosnia to maintain the stability and peace of the international system, which is an important national interest for most states. In 1992 Yugoslavia split and from this collapse three states: Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia became independent and went to war with each other. The war was for territory. (Snow, 2008) The three independent states launched militia attacks against each other and seized territory by killing and displacing unarmed civilians. (Snow, 2008) This war led to the genocide of the Bosnians by the Serbs. (Bosnian Genocide, 2008) Serbia captured Bosnian civilians, beat and killed them, separated them from each other, sent them to detention camps, and raped the women. (Bosnian War, 2008) The media described the Bosnian genocide as the Holocaust. There were pictures of… in the center of the paper… Pearson Longman, 2008. Hintjens, Helen M. “Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 37 (1999): 241-286. JSTOR. June 4, 2008. "Humanitarian intervention." Wikipedia. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 4 ​​June 2008 Pieterse, Jan N. “Sociology of Humanitarian Intervention: Comparing Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia.” The dilemmas of humanitarian intervention. Les Dilemmes De L'Intervention 18 (1997): 71-93. JSTOR. June 4, 2008. “Rwanda.” Wikipedia. 2008. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. June 4, 2008. Snow, Donald M. Cases in International Relations Portraits of the Future. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008.