Recently, the world has seen the intervention of world powers in the Libyan uprising. This cooperative approach was carried out to enforce a U.N. resolution against Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s ruthless repression of Libyans speaking out against his dictatorship.

The U.S. and its allies state that their intention is simply to enforce the U.N. resolution, but I believe that more decisive action is needed. Libya also violated the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Gaddafi’s regime has been known to do.

The events in Libya are just another example of how poor the enforcement of international law is. According to Freedom House, an international watchdog group whose focus is freedom in the world, 50 nations have violated the human rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to all of the people on this planet.

For years and in some cases many decades, the leaders of these nations have committed brutal acts such as torture and extrajudicial killings against their own people, which is largely what Gaddafi is doing and has been doing for years. It is appalling that only after 41 years of brutal dictatorship is the international community taking action.

The enforcement of international law and the prosecution of these crimes against humanity need to be significantly improved if the world is to become a better place. And might I add that in no way would any enforcement or prosecution of international law be a violation of a nation’s sovereignty, because a nation that is a violator of human rights does not have any legitimate sovereignty, as they have proven to the world that they are incapable of humanely providing governance to their people.

Now is the time to start actual enforcement of international law. Too many people around the world, especially in Africa, the Middle East and Asia have suffered through too many violations of their human rights, which are supposed to be guaranteed by international law. Gaddafi is hopefully the first of many world leaders to pay a hefty price for violating these inalienable rights, and Libya will hopefully become the third country that sees a democratic transition that I think could eventually could spread throughout the world to every human on the planet.