{"id":103213,"date":"2022-07-07T11:18:15","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T09:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=103213"},"modified":"2022-07-07T15:22:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T13:22:47","slug":"starvation-war-crime-never-punished-ukraine-elsewhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/103213-starvation-war-crime-never-punished-ukraine-elsewhere.html","title":{"rendered":"Starvation, a war crime never yet punished, in Ukraine and elsewhere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Freeing Ukrainian wheat by facilitating its return to world markets is an urgent and timely imperative. But at the same time, warring parties around the world continue to use famine as a weapon, as old as war itself. The authors of this article, researchers in international law, argue that the time has finally come to prosecute the tactical use of starvation for what it is: a war crime.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

A hideous contradiction is playing out in war-torn Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians are starving in cities besieged by Russian forces<\/a>. Meanwhile, the country\u2019s grain stores are bursting with food, and the government is begging for international assistance to export Ukrainian grain<\/a> to world markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of 2021, almost 200 million people globally were suffering acute food insecurity<\/a>. The number climbed after Russia\u2019s invasion and blockade of Ukraine<\/a>, a key exporter of grains and oil seeds, which disrupted world food markets<\/a>. This is pushing up food prices and straining aid budgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia isn\u2019t the only belligerent to weaponize hunger. Most people at risk of famine today<\/a> live in places afflicted by war<\/a>. Many are being deliberately starved in what amounts to a form of societal torture<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, starvation tactics have been excluded from war crimes prosecutions. As scholars who study international law<\/a>, humanitarian crises<\/a> and food security<\/a>, our view is that it is time to confront the criminality of this practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not just a tactic for dictators<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Starvation is one of the oldest weapons of war. Romans used it to defeat and destroy Carthage in 146 B.C.<\/a> The tactics have changed little over time. They include destroying food, farms and water supplies and cutting off besieged enemy populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s tempting to think that only totalitarians would use food as a weapon. Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine today echoes the Holodomor<\/a>, dictator Josef Stalin\u2019s subjugation of Ukraine by starvation<\/a> in 1933.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adolf Hitler\u2019s \u201cHungerplan<\/a>\u201d starved 4.2 million Soviet citizens to death in World War II. In 1977, Cambodia\u2019s Pol Pot used mass starvation as a tool of titanic social reengineering in his Year Zero<\/a> effort to turn his country into a purely agrarian nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But liberal states are not innocent. The Lieber Code of 1863<\/a>, which President Abraham Lincoln issued to instruct the Union army on the limits of hostilities, provided that it is \u201clawful to starve the hostile belligerent, armed or unarmed,\u201d specifying that fleeing civilians could be driven back into a besieged location \u201cso as to hasten on the surrender.\u201d The U.S. Department of Defense did not formally renounce this legal position until 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This Oct. 7, 1864, sketch by Alfred R. Waud shows Union Army troops burning crops in Virginia\u2019s Shenandoah Valley. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered the targeting of civilian property as a way of breaking Southerners\u2019 will to fight. Library of Congress<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This was not merely a paper doctrine. The Atlantic powers used mass starvation as a weapon in both world wars, employing comprehensive maritime blockades<\/a> as a favored tactic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. went so far as to call its effort to encircle the Japanese homeland in 1945 Operation Starvation<\/a>. Britain used the same phrase for its mass civilian relocation program<\/a> designed to defeat communists in Malaya in the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Geneva Conventions<\/a>, key treaties governing warfare, were drafted after World War II, the U.S. and Great Britain successfully resisted efforts to prohibit such methods, ensuring that starvation of civilians would remain permissible in war<\/a> for several more decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1977, starvation became a war crime<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first significant steps toward outlawing starvation tactics came after war-driven famines in Nigeria\u2019s breakaway Biafra region<\/a> in the late 1960s and Bangladesh in 1972 and 1974<\/a>. In 1977, nations adopted two additional<\/a> protocols<\/a> to the Geneva Conventions, each of which included the prohibition of \u201cstarvation of civilians as a method of warfare.\u201d Those protocols have been ratified by 174 and 169 states, respectively. In 1998 the International Criminal Court Statute<\/a> codified starvation methods as a war crime in international armed conflicts. A 2019 amendment<\/a> expanded this doctrine to cover noninternational armed conflicts \u2013 conflicts between states and organized armed groups, or between organized armed groups. In addition to food, the legal definition of starvation also includes deprivation of water, shelter and medical care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Latest data from blockaded Tigray (via Professor Nyssen of Ghent Uni) shows 2021 crop yield was just 25-50% of a regular year. Military targeting of farming has ruined crops and significantly driven up the price of food. Starvation is being used as a weapon and is a war crime. pic.twitter.com\/vG9pPD2RPx<\/a><\/p>— Lord (David) Alton (@DavidAltonHL) March 11, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote>