Starvation as a Choice

Hunger in war is often described as inevitable. As if starvation were a tragic but unavoidable consequence of violence, instability, or logistical failure. International law says otherwise. 

Starvation is not collateral damage. It is not a technical malfunction. It is the foreseeable outcome of human decisions—decisions governed by law, prohibited by law, and yet too often tolerated by the international community. 

What we witnessed in Gaza or in Sudan is not a legal grey zone. It is a collapse of legal protection.

 International law is unambiguous. The right to adequate food applies at all times, including during armed conflict. It is grounded in human dignity and anchored in binding obligations. States must respect existing access to food, protect populations from interference by third parties, and fulfil the right when people cannot feed themselves. Above all, they have an immediate obligation to ensure that no one suffers from hunger. 

These obligations do not disappear in war. On the contrary, they are reinforced.

International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare. It forbids the destruction of objects indispensable to civilian survival. It requires humanitarian access. International criminal law goes further, establishing individual criminal responsibility when starvation is intentionally inflicted on civilian populations. 

Together, these legal frameworks form one of the clearest and most consistently articulated prohibitions in international law. 

The problem, therefore, is not the absence of norms. It is the failure to apply them. 

 In Gaza, the right to food has been vulnerated across all its dimensions. Food availability has collapsed with the destruction of agricultural land, livestock, fisheries and food infrastructure. Physical and economic access has been systematically undermined by restrictions on movement, destroyed markets, mass unemployment and extreme prices. Diets have become dangerously inadequate, stripped of nutritional diversity and safety. Livelihoods and food systems have been rendered unsustainable, with no realistic path to recovery. 

These conditions did not emerge overnight. They are the result of sustained actions and omissions that progressively eroded the foundations of survival with dignity. 

Too often, famine is treated as a threshold that must be crossed before responsibility begins. This is a profound misunderstanding. Famine is not a trigger for concern; it is evidence that multiple, sustained violations have already occurred. From a legal perspective, responsibility arises much earlier—when access to food or humanitarian assistance is deliberately blocked, when food systems are destroyed, or when civilians are exposed to harm in order to eat. 

The continued use of hunger as a tool of war is not a failure of international law. It is a failure of enforcement. It reflects a lack of political will to uphold the very norms States have collectively created. 

By the time starvation becomes visible to all, the law has already been broken—repeatedly, systematically, and at scale. 

 The question we must confront is therefore simple and deeply unsettling: what does international law mean if it cannot prevent, stop, or remedy the deliberate starvation of civilians in full view of the world?

    Foto- FAO