Hunger and International Justice

By Tom Dannenbaum, Associate Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy 

One of the most pernicious causes of the decline of hunger in the world is the human imposition of deprivation, either in the form of decisions of the belligerents on how to make war or decisions of governments on how to exercise control over populations. Some of these decisions are criminal, but accountability is scarce. The change requires building the confidence of prosecutors and researchers in the viability of the available legal tools, despite the relative gradualness of the effects of deprivations compared to other atrocious crimes, the challenges associated with establishing the cause of those effects in complex and multivariate conditions, and the fact that many of the people subjected to mass deprivation endure tortuous suffering without dying. In this context, the agents responsible for international accountability should focus on the war crime of starving the civilian population as a method of war and on the crime against humanity of “other inhuman acts.” This article explains why these crimes are the most appropriate from the expressive and evidentiary point of view and outlines the contours of the relevant legislation.

Read full article here.