What is it about?
In this paper, I address the question of whether nowadays the intentional starvation of civilians inflicted during peacetime could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court as an act of genocide, an act of persecution, an act of extermination or as an “inhumane act”.
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Why is it important?
The starvation of civilians is a frequent and recurring criminal behaviour that affects a large number of victims in modern society and has a harmful impact on the physical world. At the same time, there are currently no rules, at the level of international criminal law, expressly criminalising this conduct during peacetime. Thus, as episodes of mass starvation still constitute a serious challenge for ICL, clarifying how the ICC may prosecute peacetime starvation through crimes already typified in the Rome Statute is a meaningful task that contributes to strengthening the global accountability system and ending the impunity for starvation crimes.
Perspectives
Peacetime starvation and its prosecution before the International Criminal Court is a relatively new topic within international criminal law that has been steadily gaining increasing attention. Despite that, certain areas of the topic are still neglected and deserve further research and study. With this article, I precisely aimed to shed some light on some of those neglected topics.
Simone Antonio Luciano
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Starvation at the International Criminal Court: Reflections on the Available Options for the Prosecution of the Crime of Starvation, International Criminal Law Review, February 2023, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15718123-bja10149.
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