Description
n November 2024, a UN Special Committee accused Israel of “using starvation as a method of war” in the Gaza Strip, leading to “mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions” for Palestinians. This accusation urgently invites legal scholars and practitioners to re-trace the issues surrounding the classification of starvation as a crime, its intersections with genocide, the legality of using starvation as a means, and the ensuing responsibility and accountability in international criminal law (ICL). Supported by a combined critical historiographical and legal perspective, this paper highlights how deliberate starvation has been a familiar tool both for state actors and warring parties to exert pressure and power for achieving political and military objectives. Its comparative analysis of the mass starvation under Mao’s regime during the 1950s in China and the current Israel-Hamas war will help shed light on the dynamics of international criminal regime while tackling a variety of legal, political and ethical challenges. They range from the diUiculty of evidence-gathering, the ambivalent role of technology/AI in armed conflicts, the protection of victims’ rights in light of the UN 2006 Basic Principals, decision by the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights as well as provisions in the statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), to the scope of culpability individual state and non-state leaders face. We argue that the awareness of recognizing deliberate starvation as a crime and its intersections with genocide and (specific) crimes against humanity oUer new possibilities of creating additional legal rules in ICL by introducing a distinction between the basic and qualified forms of a criminal oUence as well as criteria of criminalizing bad policy decisions such as the use of civilian population in service of the perceived needs of political movements.
