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Starvation in Armed Conflicts


 Armed conflict can cause food shortages, which continue long after the fighting is over, and increase the chance that a famine may occur. When it occurs during the context of an armed conflict, death resulting from hunger is tolerated by the international community. Yet, the prevention or alleviation of famines, even within environmentally precarious regions, is often within human control. This gives rise to the following questions. Can a state use the outbreak of an armed conflict as an excuse to remain passive while starvation takes its course? Is it justified for a state to allocate most of its resources to its military operations, while claiming to have difficulties to collect sufficient resources to meet its minimum core obligations under international human rights law? This article aims to clarify these complex questions and elaborates on how the framework of human rights law includes provisions to prevent starvation in armed conflicts. With a focus on the right to food, this analysis scrutinizes the human rights-based obligations to respect, protect and fulfil, which impose clear duties on states with respect to famines. As it is generally accepted that international human rights law continues to apply in situations of armed conflict, both human rights law and international humanitarian law apply simultaneously in these scenarios. The analysis thus also examines the complex relationship between obligations under human rights law and humanitarian law and the influence of the former on the assessment of latter. Finally, the article touches upon the scope of obligations held by armed non-state actors.