Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, State Food Crimes

Extract

State Food Crimes is a book providing detailed evidence of the specific mechanisms through which devastating starvation is inflicted. Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann presents six historical (Ukraine, China, Cambodia, Ireland, Germany during the First World War British Blockade and Canada in the 1870s) and four contemporary (North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and the West Bank and Gaza) case studies of food deprivation. She explains that state food crimes are ‘crimes by states that deny their own citizens and others for whom they are directly responsible one of their most fundamental human rights, the right to food’.¹

Howard-Hassmann’s main objective is to reflect on the prevention and punishment of state-induced famine. The case studies illustrate the ways in which starvation and violations of the right to freedom from hunger and the right to food go hand in hand with, are caused or exacerbated by, abuses of ‘citizenship, mobility rights, property rights, and the right to work’ and abuses of rights related to political participation (voting rights, freedom of the media), providing further evidence of the interdependence of human rights.² Howard-Hassmann forcefully describes the political agency through which state actors enrich themselves, deny human rights to maintain their power, impede or politicize food aid, engage in corruption and attack livelihoods in order to strategically advance their own interests. Following David Marcus’ four categories of faminogenesis,³ the author classifies the contemporary case studies on a spectrum ranging from incompetent decision-making (Venezuela), to indifference or recklessness (West Bank and Gaza/Israel), finally culminating at intentional criminality (Zimbabwe and North Korea).⁴