Starvation and Humanitarian Assistance in Time of Armed Conflicts

The recent practice (i.e. the conflicts in Syria and Yemen) shows that civilians are very often intentionally starved by the belligerents, often on the basis of mere suspicion that being a part of the civilian population means that they would sympathize with a belligerent. This is in sharp contrast with the normative body prohibiting the tactics of starvation of the civilian population as a method of war, provided for in the 1977 Geneva Protocols and by customary law. The attention of this chapter will focus on how this method of war is put into practice, through the destruction of objects indispensable for the survival of the civilian population and of siege warfare. An interesting development around this issue is the amendment of the International Criminal Court Statute, introducing the crime of starvation of civilians in non-international armed conflicts; and UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2417 (2018), in which the UNSC stressed for the first time, in general terms, the direct impact of armed conflicts on food security.