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Siege Starvation: A War Crime Of Societal Torture, Tom Dannenbaum

Chicago Journal of International Law

A recent amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has drawn unprecedented attention to the war crime of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. It comes at a time when mass starvation in war is resurgent, devastating populations in Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria, South Sudan, Nigeria, and elsewhere. The practice has also drawn the scrutiny of the United Nations Security Council. And yet, despite this heightened profile and sharpened urgency, what precisely is criminally wrongful about starvation methods remains underspecified.

A common way of thinking about the criminal wrong is as a form of killing or …