When Food Becomes a Weapon: Starvation as a Tool of War

Food is Power: A healthy and thriving community can only exist by having reliable and affordable access to foods that nourish, strengthen, and empower them. From the laborers to the refugees, all people must have food to be free.

You are woken in the middle of the night, startled by the sound of explosions, screams, and sirens. The whole world erupts into chaos and terror. If you can catch it through the deafening collapse of rubble and the anguish of a mother who lost her child, you may hear hushed prayers. It is an especially quiet sound as blasts rip through the night. It’s not the first time this week that you’ve woken this way.

You haven’t eaten in days. No humanitarian aid has arrived for weeks. The beautiful garden you cultivated at home, and the farms your uncles tended, are destroyed. The olive trees that their grandparents cherished are shattered and burned. The cost of a single bag of flour is more than $300.

You watch your neighbors move mountains to find and prepare food for their children. There are a number of makeshift stoves, cobbled together by debris and ingenuity. Kids suffer from malnutrition; a tragedy in a world with enough food for us all. Some people risk their lives for food. Some people lose their lives trying to get food for their family. Some simply die from lack of food.

You close your eyes, ignoring the hunger pains in your belly, and try to remember the land you knew: green, abundant, sacred. Tomorrow will be more of the same.

Starvation as a War Crime

“For the purpose of this Statute, ‘war crimes’ means: grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely, any of the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention, including intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies.” — Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949

Intentionally manufacturing starvation in civilian populations living through violent conflict, destroying agricultural land and resources, and disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid are all legally considered war crimes.

In times of domestic or international violence, civilian populations are virtually always impacted – many people are displaced from their ancestral homes, lose the ability to work to support themselves and their families, watch their family members be abducted or harmed, witness the destruction of their neighborhoods, and many must become reliant on humanitarian aid to survive.

The Weaponization of Hunger

Though against international law, occupying forces may lock down borders, blocking the delivery of crucial food assistance – essentially establishing a man-made famine. Entire civilian populations then face crisis-levels of acute malnutrition, while trucks full of water, food aid, and medical supplies sit parked only a few miles away, unable to provide relief.

Occasionally, when limited aid is let through checkpoints, the volunteers distributing food, and the residents desperate to receive that food, are targeted and killed. The simple act of trying to feed your family should never come with a death sentence.

The food that does still exist in war zones is often sold for unreasonably high prices – sometimes more than 20 times the typical cost for that item. Civilians resort to feeding themselves with what they can find: animal feed, ground date pits, boiled weeds. Living through the violence of genocide, at the same time starving or resorting to dehumanizing methods of feeding themselves or their families, is absolutely devastating for civilians.

Destroying the Future of Food

During the turmoil of war, civilians often abandon the farms and gardens that they had tended to feed themselves and their community. Commonly, civilians must evacuate their homes on short notice and often escape with little besides the clothing on their backs.

If people are allowed to return to their homes, they may discover that nothing remains but concrete and rebar. They may return to flattened orchards, thousands of square miles of decimated farmland, aquifers salted and destroyed. The crisis of hunger is not only felt during the height of the conflict, but long-term impacts to the livability of the land will continue to damage food systems for generations.

Food as a Human Right

At Northwest Harvest, we believe, in accordance with the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, that food is a human right. The Committee declares that “the right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.”

The violation of these rights in times of conflict and war are legally prohibited and morally unconscionable. People living through genocide, violence, and war should still be well fed. Your country of origin, your documentation status, your religion, your race, your gender, your sexuality, your language – none of these identities or circumstances mean that you deserve to go hungry.

Food is power: without food, people and communities cannot function. When food becomes a weapon, it attacks the very foundation of human dignity and survival.

Why This Matters Here at Home

At Northwest Harvest, we are committed to ending hunger in Washington—but we know that hunger does not exist in a vacuum. The same systems that allow food to be weaponized in war zones are at play in our own communities. When governments use hunger as a tool of control—whether by blocking humanitarian aid abroad or slashing food assistance programs like SNAP here at home—they reinforce a global apparatus of oppression that keeps the most vulnerable people powerless.

Understanding how hunger is used as a tool of domination, both globally and locally, is essential to dismantling the systems that perpetuate it. The U.S. government’s role in international conflicts, including its funding decisions, is directly connected to domestic policy choices that impact food access for millions of Americans. These are not separate issues—they are points on the same spectrum of injustice.

To truly end hunger, we must not only provide food—we must also confront the structures that make them hungry in the first place.

Taking Action

The international community has a responsibility to uphold humanitarian law and protect civilian access to food during conflicts. Here’s how you can make a difference:

• Advocate for humanitarian access: Contact your representatives to demand that humanitarian aid be allowed to reach people in need. Denounce the disruption of aid convoys.
• Support humanitarian organizations: Donate to trusted organizations providing food aid in conflict zones.
• Stay informed and share responsibly: Be a responsible source of information by actively sharing content from credible sources. Counter disinformation about conflicts and humanitarian crises.
• Speak up about international law: Be vocal about international law related to food, starvation, and war crimes. Support accountability for violations of the Geneva Conventions.

When we stand up against the weaponization of food, we defend the principle that access to nourishment is not a privilege to be withheld, but a fundamental human right that must be protected even in the darkest times.

Reference:

• https://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/
• https://www.npr.org/2024/03/29/1241148952/gaza-hunger-famine-aid-israel-hamas-war
• https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2024/10/17/ihl-and-the-challenge-of-maintaining-food-security-in-armed-conflict/#:~:text=IHL%20prohibits%20starvation%20of%20civilians,that%20it%20would%20cause%20suffering
• https://www.icrc.org/en/document/food-security-in-armed-conflict-what-you-need-know
• https://www.csis.org/analysis/starvation-crimes-and-international-law-new-era
• https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/gaza-flour-prices-soar-300-bag-after-more-50-days-without-new-aid-deliveries