Jornal of Eslamic Human Rights

Food as a Fundamental Human Right or a Weapon of War (A Case Study of Planned Famine in Gaza)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

hasan alizadeh 1
hosein rostamzad 2
babak pourghahramani 3

1 دانشجوی دکتری حقوق بین الملل، واحد مراغه، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، مراغه. ایران

2 دانشیار گروه حقوق، واحد مراغه، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، مراغه. ایران

3 استادیار گروه حقوق، واحد مراغه، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، مراغه.ایران

Abstract
Today, from a legal perspective, although food has been recognized as a human right by international law documents and the domestic laws of many societies, it is used as a method of war in some regions of the world. A weapon that, although history remembers a dark list of examples from Stalin’s Ukraine to Biafra, the methodology, scale, and systematic targeting of today’s Gaza crisis only evoke the Nazi “starvation plan.” This research examines the use of hunger as a weapon of war, the responsibility of the offending state, and the monitoring and accountability mechanisms, using a descriptive-analytical method and citing international law. Therefore, the question arises as to what are the legal implications and consequences of an instrumental approach to food as a weapon of war? The research is based on the hypothesis that starving a civilian population is prohibited under customary and treaty international law and, in addition to creating criminal liability for the offending state, if the starvation of the people of Gaza is intended to genocide the Palestinians, it also imposes obligations on other states. The prohibition of genocide is a universal obligation and all states have the right to invoke the responsibility of the Israeli regime for violating universal obligations. In other words, the legal consequence of the occurrence of an international crime will be the adoption and immediate countermeasure by the international community as a whole, and of course, it will not be limited to this level of reaction.

Keywords

Gaza
Food
Crime
Rome Statute
Humanitarian Law
Subjects
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