Starvation as a Weapon of War

One of the oldest texts on military strategy, The Art of War, recognised a clear interconnection between warfare and food supplies, encouraging military strategists to capitalise on the adverse impact of war on the peasantry to inflict damage on “the enemy”:

“Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs. … the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people’s substance to be drained away. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of their income will be dissipated; while government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantles, draught-oxen and heavy wagons, will amount to four tents of its total revenue. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one’s own store.”

– Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Arcturus, 2020), Ch. 2, 9-15

A prominent early recorded use of starvation as a military tactic is Julius Caesar’s defeat of the Gallic tribes at Alesia. The battle between the Roman army, commanded by Julius Caesar, and Gallic tribes, led by Vercingetorix would be a turning point in the Gallic Wars. It is considered as a ‘classic example of siege warfare and [military] investment’, the process of surrounding an enemy to prevent escape or entry.

The Gallic fortified settlement of Alesia contained a garrison of 80,000 men, in addition to the local population. Outnumbered by the Gauls, Caesar embraced tactics that starved Alesia and its defenders into surrender. Caesar ordered the construction of two concentric fortifications to encircle the Gallic garrison; an inner fortification to ensure that the garrison inside Alesia could not escape; and an outer fortification to ensure no relief (either military or humanitarian) could be sent. The lack of supplies and relief forces had reached a point that the women and children offered themselves for enslavement in exchange for food. Caesar’s victory in the battle of Alesia subdued Gallic tribes to the Romans and was a considered a major military achievement for the Roman Republic, and Caesar personally.

Characterised by disease, huger and death, siege warfare was first developed by the Assyrians in the first millennium B.C., and perfected as a military tactic during the Middle Ages. The aim of a besieging force would be to encircle a garrison or populated area, with the aim of deteriorating enemy defences and cutting off access to vital supplies. The tactical advance of a siege lay in avoiding engaging the enemy in open battle.

Some illustrative examples include:

• 1102– 1109: The siege of Tripoli, by Raymond de Saint-Gilles, Count to Toulouse, during the First Crusade. Raymond constructed the fortress of Saint-Gilles or Pilgrim’s Mountain to cut off the land route to Tripoli, which over the years made it increasingly difficult to supply food. Hence, many citizens were forced to flee to the neighbouring Homs, Tyre, and Damascus
• 4 July 1187: The Battle of Hattin between the Crusader states of the Levant and the forces of the Ayyubid sultan Saladin. The Crusaders were cut off from vital water supplies which led to their loss.
• 1203-1204: The siege of Château Gaillard was a part of King Philip II’s campaign to conquer King John of England’s continental properties. King Philip II ordered to construct fortifications to isolate the garrison of Château Gaillard. In turn, defenders of the Château destroyed the bridge across the Seine to ensure that the French could not supply their siege equipment and other necessities. King Philip II resolved this problem by building a pontoon bridge. After several months of the siege and fighting and several successful tunnel operations one of the protecting walls collapsed allowing the French to get in and conquer Château Gaillard.
• 1422- 1430: The siege of Thessalonica (modern day Thessaloniki, Greece), occupied by the Byzantines and defended by the city of Venice, from an attacking Ottoman army. The Ottoman blockade of Thessalonica lasted eight years and caused starvation of many residents while many others fled. As a result, the population was reduced nearly 20 fold.
• 1461-1468: King Edward IV of England besieged Lancastrian Queen Margaret of Anjou in Harlech Castle in North Wales. The castle protected by natural defences and connected to supply routes by the sea became the last Lancastrian fort and a base for their operations. After multiple calls to surrender over the years, and a month of full siege in 1468, the garrison of Harlech run out of supplies and surrendered.
  1480: the Ottoman Empire massed its armies to siege the small island of Rhodes in its second attempt to conquer it. After a cannon attack, a repelled attempt to explode mines under the protective walls, and prolonged bombardment, the Rhodes defenders surrendered to avoid loss of civilian life.

The Siege of Paris by Henry of Navarre, who was attempting to consolidate a contested claim to the French throne, occurred in the context of the French Wars of Religion – a civil war between Protestant (Calvinist) Huguenots, and the Catholic forces, which enjoyed the support of Spain and the Pope. Henry of Navarre, leader of the Huguenots laid claim to the throne, and commanded the French Royal Army.

The siege to seize control of Catholic-controlled Paris took place in 1590. On 7 May 1590, the French Royal Army surrounded and blockaded the city, and burnt windmills to halt food supplies from entering the city. It was considered that only starvation could compel Paris to surrender. During the siege, multiple negotiations to surrender Paris failed. At one point, Henry sent sacks of corn to the inhabitants of Paris out of pity. By 30 August, a Spanish-Catholic relief army under general the Duke of Parma made its way to Paris, successfully breaking the siege and providing food. Henry retreated. An estimated 40,000–50,000 of the population died during the siege, mostly of starvation.

The Nine Years’ War was waged between an Irish alliance against English colonial rule, at the time of an ongoing Tudor conquest of Ireland that sought, and ultimately succeeded, in destroying remaining pockets of Gaelic rule.

Hostilities mainly affected the northern province of Ulster, where the last bastion of Gaelic resistance remained.  The English utilised military tactics of deliberate destruction of crops and foodstuffs, resulting in a major famine in 1602-1603. Unable to effectively fight the guerrilla groups and gain the military advantage on the battlefield, the English employed a ‘scorched earth’ policy., ‘burning their corn, spoiling their harvest and killing or driving their cattle’ to destroy the Irish food supply in order to starve the enemy into submission. Irish sources suggest that death toll of this famine reached 60,000.

The famine occasioned during The Nine Years’ War chillingly exemplified prevailing attitudes of the day towards the legitimacy of starvation as a means of achieving military ends. Writing prior to the conflict in the 1580’s, celebrated poet and English official in Ireland, Edmund Spenser, gave a foreboding description of the tactics the English would need to apply to force the Irish to capitulate to English rule. ‘Great force must be the instrument’, he wrote, ‘but famine must be the means, for till Ireland be famished it cannot be subdued’.

In 1618, conflict broke out in the Holy Roman Empire, as Protestant Bohemian uprising against Catholic Habsburg rule. The defeat of the Bohemians would not bring the conflict to an end, but rather would see all corners of Europe drawn into long, devastating conflict known as The Thirty Years War, with phases that spread across the German states, Denmark, Sweden, and France, as each phase escalated into more generalised destruction.

Although the conflict was fought mainly along the Catholic and Protestant sectarian lines, the causes for its spread and continuation were as much political as they were religious, as various Catholic and Protestant-aligned groups struggled for the dominance in Europe.

As The Thirty Years War evolved, the conflict changed Europe’s political landscape and social fabric, as a desire to fund ever larger and more costly military establishments, with permanent troops in standing armies, gave rise to absolutism amongst European monarchs compelled to levy taxes and supress political opposition in order to fund these growing military endeavours. Local lords became prone to practices of forcing the peasantry to provide provisions of food for military troops. Those who could not fulfil their quota, were met with hostilities such as the destruction of crops, and the theft and appropriation of livestock.

The conflict highlighted how protracted conflict can lead to famine. Some 8 million people – eight percent of the European population at the time – are estimated to have lost their lives as a result of The Thirty Years War.

A notable example of starvation being utilised as a military tactic during the period of The Thirty Years War can be seen in the example of the Siege of La Rochelle. The siege took place in the course of fighting between the (Catholic) French Royal Army and the Calvinist Huguenots. In September 1627, the French Royal forces under Louis XIII surrounded La Rochelle, the last remaining centre of Huguenot resistance, that had been fortified following the Edict of Nantes by King Henry IV of France following his conversion to Catholicism after the conclusion of the French Wars of Religion decades earlier. Under Louis XIII, the Edict of Nantes was revoked, with the fortified Huguenot towns maintaining a military presence independent of the crown perceived as a threat. The Huguenot’s rebelled.

Louis XIII’s troops, supported by the Spanish, blockaded La Rochelle with fortified entrenchments on the land and a long seawall in the sea, stopping all supplies from the Huguenot’s English allies. These fortifications cut off residents from receiving food and other vital supplies. As a result of the siege, an estimated three-quarters of the population died from starvation.

The Ndwandwe–Zulu War was fought between the Zulu Kingdom led by its founder, Shaka Zulu, and the neighbouring Ndwandwe tribe in South Africa during the expansion of the Zulu Kingdom. Seeking to avoid the risk to his army of  a frontal attack against the numerically superior Ndwandwe, Shaka Zulu deployed a scorched earth policy.

The policy involved a deliberate withdrawal of the Zulu forces in order to entice the Ndwandwe tribe to pursue them. When withdrawing, the Zulus literally scorched the earth behind them: withdrawing Zulu forces burnt fields as well as food which could not be carried, and hid the cattle and grain in the forest. When the Ndwandwe, unprepared and unequipped to fight an extended campaign and dependant on the captured food, began to starve and retreated, Shaka attacked the enemy and drove them back across the country.

On War is a book written by Prussian General and military strategist, Carl von Clausewitz. It was written mostly after the Napoleonic wars and focussed on war and military strategy. In addressing the legitimacy of use of famine as a deliberate military tactic, Von Clausewitz wrote:

‘If the assailant does not venture to pass by a position, he can invest it and reduce it by famine. But this supposes two conditions beforehand: first, that the position is not open in rear, and secondly, that the assailant is sufficiently strong to be able to make such an investment. If these two conditions are united then the assailant’s army certainly would be neutralised for a time by this strong position, but at the same time, the defensive pays the price of this advantage by a loss of his defensive force.’

On 24 April 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War of 1861-1865 between the Union States and 11 Southern states that formed the Confederate States of America, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued ‘General Orders No. 100: Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field,’ commonly known as the ‘Lieber Code’ for its author, Franz Lieber.

The Lieber Code was the first attempt to codify the laws of war regulating the armed forces of a State. Article 17 of the Code expressly recognised the legitimacy of starvation as a tool of warfare:

‘War is not carried on by arms alone. It is lawful to starve the hostile belligerent, armed or unarmed, so that it leads to the speedier subjection of the enemy.’

The Allied blockade of Europe was a prolonged naval blockade by the Allies (France, Britain, Russia, Japan, Italy and the U.S.) utilised during the later stages of World War I to restrict the maritime supplies to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire). First Lord of the British Admiralty Winston Churchill stated:

The British blockade treated the whole of Germany as if it were a beleaguered fortress, and avowedly sought to starve the whole population – men, women and children, old and young, wounded and sound – into submission.

Initially, the blockade did not impact the Central Powers’ war efforts, but the Allies soon realised that the longer the blockade was in place, the more effective it became. Chronic illness spread throughout Germany due to the lack of supplies. Tuberculosis related deaths increased, which could have resulted from the lack of access to foods containing proper nutrients; the body’s immune system begins to shut down. The blockade also affected the livestock since most of the livestock fed on foreign imported foods.

Mtunya, or ‘scramble for food’ in the Gogo language, was a famine in the Dodoma region of central Tanzania. The famine was triggered by a drought that affected almost entire Africa, military requisitions by the German and later British forces characterised by the appropriation  of men, cattle and large stores of grain in support of military efforts. This deadly combination led to starvation of 30,000 people. In addition to death of one fifth of the population of the affected province, Mtunya caused loss of knowledge, mass migration and the Gogos’ dependence on the colonial economy.

During World War I, British, Russian and Ottoman Empire forces occupied the territory of Persia (modern day Iran), rendering the rule of the Qajar dynasty ineffective. The territory was struck by mass starvation and widespread disease a result of famine. Though seasonal droughts were one of the contributing causes of the famine, the situation was worsened through the practice of requisition and confiscation of foodstuffs by occupying armies. As early as November 1915, Russian troops were known to block the roads and prohibit grain transfer unless it was for their soldiers.

By the beginning of 1918, famine had spread across the country, and the looting of bakeries and food stores had begun. The British and Russian armed forces had disrupted the country’s transport network because of their requisition of pack animals, mules and camels for the oil industry. This negatively impacted the distribution of foodstuffs and other goods throughout the country. The price for transporting grain increased during the War, further negatively impacting the living conditions of the civilians.  In the vicinity of 9 million Persians (40% of the population) lost their lives due to the famine.

Also known as the Povolzhye famine, the Russian Famine of 1921 resulted from the Bolshevik Revolution and the civil war that ensued following the abdication of Tsar Nicolas II, compounded by the communist policies subsequently implemented by the Bolsheviks, and a poorly functioning railway network that prevented effective distribution of food.

The Bolshevik government had requisitioned supplies from the peasantry to the Red Army and its supporters for little or no remuneration. Crop production, as a result, had drastically reduced, while the wealthier peasantry withheld their surplus food to sell it on the black market. A policy of prodrazverstka was implemented, involving the mass confiscation of grain and agricultural products. The famine that followed forced civilians to seek alternative sources of nutrition, as they turned to seeds, acorns, grass, weeds, tree bark, and even the corpses of dead animals. Rumours of cannibalism and the black-market trade in human flesh emerged. The famine gave rise of the largest humanitarian relief responses in history: at one point, the American Relief Administration under U.S. President Herbert Hoover was helping to feed 11 million people per day.

The consensus is that at least five million Russians died of starvation and disease, though the number may have been higher.

The Ukrainian famine, known as Holodomor or the Terror-Famine, took place in 1932-1933. In 1929, Joseph Stalin attempted to collectivise agriculture, forcing peasants to give up their farms and join large collective farms (kolkhozy). At the time, Ukraine was one of the largest grain-producing countries in the USSR. The policy of collectivisation spurred an armed rebellion, to which Stalin responded by implementing evermore draconian measures with further adverse impacts for food security. This led to a completely man-made famine inflicted on the Ukrainian people in retribution for the rebellion.

Soviet policy during the Holodomor included blacklisting farms, villages, and whole towns in Ukraine to prevent them from receiving food. Peasants were not allowed to leave the territory to search for food. At the same time, Soviet food requisitions in support of revolutionary objectives in States outside of the USSR were increasing, and aid was not provided in sufficient quantities to the local population, compounding the situation for the Ukrainian peasantry. A joint statement to the United Nations in 2003, signed by representatives of 25 States, including Ukraine and Russia, acknowledged that between 7–10 million people died during the Holodomor.

During World War II, starvation, including the deprivation of civilians of food, the theft of land and food supplies from Poles, Slavs, and Jews, was used as a deliberate tactic that manifested in various ways. Der Hungerplan benefited the German population above all others and also served as a tool of mass murder and genocide.

For instance, starvation was a core component of the Nazis plan for the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Calorie allocations in occupied territories were calculated according to the Nazi policies that prioritised German racial purity in the Reich: Germans would receive 2,000 calories per day; the Ukrainians, 1,000 calories; 600 calories allocated for  Poles, and a paltry 180 calories Jews.

The Nazis attempted to seize food from the German-occupied Soviet Union territories to give to their troops. Discussions of this policy occurred during the “Staatssekretäre” conference. The policy, documented during the Nuremberg Trials as “Göring’s Green Folder”, involved pillage of oilseed, grain and other commodities to be taken to Germany, while more perishable fat and meat were left behind for the troops.

Starvation was also prevalent in Nazi concentration camps and a central strategy of the Nazi plant to liquidate the European Jewry. “That we sentence 1.2 million Jews to die of hunger should be noted only marginally,” noted Hans Frank, a Nazi governor of occupied Poland, in his diary.

Approximately 7 million civilians, mostly Jews and Soviets are estimated to have died as a result of Der Hungerplan

The siege of Leningrad (modern day St. Petersburg) was a prolonged military blockade of the Soviet city of Leningrad, a by German and Finnish forces, during World War II. The siege began on 8 September 1941 and lasted until 27 January 1944. Leningrad was encircled by the Nazis and their allies as fortifications built by able-bodied men, women, and children from the city hindered the German forces from entering. As a result, the Germans air bombarded warehouses containing a large part of Leningrad’s food supply and severed all lines of communication with the city. By late September 1941, Hitler issued a memo ordering “to level [Leningrad] to the ground” by artillery shelling and wait until its population starves. The supplies from the city were to be captured and redirected to feed the Axis’ military efforts.

While some 650,000 civilians were evacuated from the city, a population of almost 2 million remained in Leningrad as the encirclement tightened. Food and fuel brought into the city by Lake Lagoda offered minimal relief, as food rations became increasingly severe. By December 1941, starvation hit the population of Leningrad. All thoughts turned to food. Anything that could be consumed, was. Contemporaneous diary entries reveal that hunger permeated all aspects of life. They describe a population that became physically androgenous due to the physical waste inflicted by hunger: “Horrible, only skeletons, not people,” wrote one factory worker. The misery of the situation was recorded in the diary of twelve-year-old, Tanya Savicheva, who recorded the successive deaths of her family members between January and April 1942. Her last entry would read “Everyone died. Only Tanya is left”. Tanya was rescued from Leningrad, but succumbed to tuberculosis before the war ended.

Hunger lead to an increase in criminality, especially in relation to theft and murder for ration cards, and 1,000 to 2,000 cases of cannibalism were recorded by Soviet authorities. Perpetrators were disproportionately unsupported, disadvantaged young women. The siege led to the death of approximately 1.1 million people — some 40% of the city population — mostly civilians, and mostly due to hunger.

The High Command Case was the last twelve trials of the U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Amongst the charges levelled at the defendants, Field Marshall Wilhelm von Leeb was tried for his role in the siege of Leningrad. However,

A belligerent commander may lawfully lay siege to a place controlled by the enemy and endeavor by a process of isolation to cause its surrender. The propriety of attempting to reduce it by starvation is not questioned. Hence the cutting off every source of sustenance from without is deemed legitimate. […] We might wish the law were otherwise, but we must administer it as we find it.

-The United States of America vs. Wilhelm von Leeb, et al. (The High Command Case, US Military Tribunal, Nuremberg) at 562

Geneva Conventions are four treaties adopted in the aftermath of World War II to codify the rules of warfare and treatment of combatants and non-combatants, as well as to protect civilians from the impact of war. The universal acceptance of the Geneva Conventions has led to their provisions attaining the status of customary international law.

While the Geneva Conventions did not expressly prohibit the use of starvation as a method of warfare, Article 23 of Geneva Convention IV did create an obligation on High Contracting States to permit the free passage of objects indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, and to allow the free passage of essential foodstuffs to children, pregnant mothers and ‘maternity cases’:

Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases. The obligation of a High Contracting Party to allow the free passage of the consignments indicated in the preceding paragraph is subject to the condition that this Party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing:

(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,

(b) that the control may not be effective, or

(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

The Power which allows the passage of the consignments indicated in the first paragraph of this Article may make such permission conditional on the distribution to the persons benefited thereby being made under the local supervision of the Protecting Powers.

Such consignments shall be forwarded as rapidly as possible, and the Power which permits their free passage shall have the right to prescribe the technical arrangements under which such passage is allowed

Article 17 of Geneva Convention IV also provided for basic forms of humanitarian relief to besieged areas by obligating parties to a conflict to ensure the most vulnerable persons could be extricated from besieged areas, and to allow for the passage of medical personnel and equipment.

The Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to conclude local agreements for the removal from besieged or encircled areas, of wounded, sick, infirm, and aged persons, children and maternity cases, and for the passage of ministers of all religions, medical personnel and medical equipment on their way to such areas.

The Nigerian Civil War was a conflict between the government of Nigeria and Biafran forces who were attempting to gain independence for the Republic of Biafra. Soon after Nigeria gained its independence from Britain, fighting broke about between Muslim Hausa in the north and Christian Igbos, forcing the latter to flee to the east. The Igbos would use their majority in eastern Nigeria in an attempt to create an independent Biafran state. The government rejected Biafran independence, in part because Nigeria’s lucrative oil reserves, which were key to the country’s economy, were situated within the territory of the proposed Biafran state. The government declared war on the breakaway republic.

The Nigerian forces massacred civilians in response to the Biafran early offensive in the mid-west. When the war fell into a stalemate in 1968, the government deemed it necessary to use starvation as a means of warfare pursuant to their ethnic cleansing policy.  A blockade of Biafra and Red Cross aid was imposed as a deliberate policy during the violence, leading to mass starvation. In three years, an estimated 2 million civilians died of starvation.

The two Protocols additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 strengthen the protection of victims in armed conflicts. Protocol I elaborates the rules related to international armed conflicts, while Protocol II expands the basic rules applicable to non-international armed conflicts introduced in Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions. Both Protocols enhance the prohibition of starvation in armed conflicts and detail the rules introduced by the Geneva Conventions.

Article 54 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides:

1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.

2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to
   move away, or for any other motive.

3. The prohibitions in paragraph 2 shall not apply to such of the objects covered by it as are used by an adverse Party:

1. 1. as sustenance solely for the members of its armed forces; or
   2. if not as sustenance, then in direct support of military action, provided, however, that in no event shall actions against these objects be taken which may be expected to leave the civilian population with such inadequate food or water as to cause its starvation or force its movement.

4. These objects shall not be made the object of reprisals.

5. In recognition of the vital requirements of any Party to the conflict in the defence of its national territory against invasion, derogation from the prohibitions contained in paragraph 2 may be made by a Party to the conflict within such territory under its own control where required by imperative military necessity.’

Article 14 of the 1977 Additional Protocol II provides:

‘Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless, for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.’

The famine of 1983–1985 is officially ascribed to drought. However, many argue that drought was not the sole cause. The famine occurred during the Ethiopian Civil War, fought between the Ethiopian military junta, the Derg, and various opposition groups fighting for Eritrean independence, primarily the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party, Ethiopian Democratic Union, and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, from September 1974 to June 1991. In the 1980s, the rebellion against the Communist rule and for independence took place mainly in the regions of Tigray and Eritrea.

Some other factors that contributed to the famine were the government restrictions imposed on the population of non-insurgent areas. Another factor was the destruction of crop-producing areas and marketplaces, which affected the trade and exchange of food. In government-controlled places, restrictions on migration, labour and trade, and forced relocation policies occurred, which hindered civilians’ ability to obtain food. Ethiopian Foreign Minister “food is a major element in our strategy against the secessionists”.

This famine claimed the lives of over 1 million Ethiopians

The North Korean Famine, also known as the Arduous March or the March of Suffering, was a period of mass starvation and a general economic crisis from 1994 to 1998. The immediate cause of the North Korean famine was the widespread flooding in August 1995, the floods damaged the rice paddies. North Korea was heavily dependent on the supplies given by the Soviet Union and China. These relations were terminated after North Korea failed to meet the demands of both parties. The disruption of aid heavily impacted food production in North Korea. This was exacerbated by the North Korean public distribution system, which determined food allocation based on occupation and status. Though resulting famine did not involve an armed conflict, the prioritisation of military worsened the impact on the civilian population. While soldiers, miners, and workers in heavy industry were allotted similar rations, most rice was syphoned to officials and military officers. Civilians suffering was increased when further cuts in rice rations, labelled “patriotic rice”, were introduced, resulting in more rice being allocated to the military. Approximately 600,000 to 1 million North Koreans are estimated to have died as a result of the famine, though estimates vary dramatically.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is a treaty adopted at the Rome Conference on 17 July 1998 and entered into force on 1 July 2002, establishing the ICC. The ICC is the first permanent, autonomous and fully independent international court. The Rome Statute outlines the powers and functions of the ICC, as well as the crimes under its jurisdiction. It makes it clear that the ICC was established to put an end to impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community and, ultimately, to contribute to the prevention of such crimes.

For the first time in the statute of an international criminal tribunal, the Rome Statute acknowledged the crime of intentional starvation of civilians. Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute provides that, in armed conflicts of an international character, “[i]ntentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions” constitutes a war crime.