Starvation In Gaza: Between Being Described As A War Crime And Potentially Rising To The Level Of Genocide
Auteurs : Tertag Zakaria .
Résumé
This article addresses the crime of starvation against the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip in light of the provisions of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. It examines the development of the normative prohibition on the use of starvation as a method of warfare and analyzes the legal and humanitarian dimensions of the field policies that accompanied the events of October 2023 and thereafter. The article begins by distinguishing between starvation as a war crime—based on the intent to deprive in order to achieve a military or political objective—and genocide, which requires a specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a human group. By examining international texts (the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, etc.), the research concludes that the systematic starvation in the Gaza case has gone beyond the scope of military pressure to become a deliberate destructive policy that meets both the material and mental elements of the crime of genocide.
Mots clés
Starvation ; International Humanitarian Law ; Rome Statute ; War Crime ; Genocide
