Starvation as a Weapon

In Starvation as a Weapon Simone Hutter explores, within the framework of international law, the legality of using deliberate starvation as a means to an end. A close look at modern famine shows that, in many cases, food scarcity is not the product of coincidence, but a side effect or result of a deliberate strategy. Starvation is an efficient instrument when used to exert pressure and power, in times of war and peace.
Simone Hutter demonstrates how international human rights law and international humanitarian law prevent deliberate starvation as a means of achieving political goals. She focuses on highly divisive and under-discussed instances in which states deploy deliberate starvation domestically, i.e. within the state’s own national territory.

Simone Hutter, Ph.D. (2014), Zurich University, was a visiting research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, a fellow for prospective researchers funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and a research assistant at the Institute for International Public Law at Zurich University. She is currently working as a human rights consultant for ECOFACT in Zurich.