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	African wars have killed at least 5 million children in last 20 years by The Lancet, Reuters, agencies   Aug. 2018   Five million children in Africa have died from preventable diseases over the last 20 years because armed conflict deprived them of access to basic healthcare or clean water, scientists reported this week.   The study published in The Lancet medical journal showed conflict in countries such as Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo had contributed to the deaths of up to 5 million children under five between 1995 and 2015.   The figure includes three million victims aged one or younger, and is much higher than previously estimated, with civilian infant deaths outnumbering armed conflict deaths by more than three to one, said scientists.   "Conflict appears to substantially increase the risk of death and stunting of young children over vast areas and for many years after conflicts have ended," said lead researcher Eran Bendavid from Stanford University in a statement.   "The impact of war generates a series of lethal but indirect impacts on communities caused by potentially preventable infectious diseases, malnutrition, and disruption of basic services such as water, sanitation, and maternal healthcare."   The study looked at almost 15,500 conflicts in 34 of Africa's 54 nations over two decades and examined data on conflict-related deaths as well as live births and child mortality rates.   It found infants born within 50 km (30 miles) of conflict had a greater risk of dying in their first year compared to those born in the same region in years without conflict.   The risk of infant death increased to 30 percent when the violence was more intense, said researchers, adding that infant mortality rates were four times higher in conflicts lasting five years or more.   The higher risk of child death persisted up to distances of 100 km from a conflict, and for children born up to eight years after conflicts subsided.   Researchers said the data showed conflicts in Africa were having a substantial impact on child mortality. They accounted for around 7 percent of all child deaths - almost 20 times higher than the 0.4 percent previously estimated by the 2015 Global Burden of Disease report.   Aid workers supporting hospitals and clinics in war zones said health workers and medical facilities were protected under international humanitarian law and all armed factions had a duty to abide by this.   "Children are often the most vulnerable to malnutrition and preventable diseases that become greater risks when families are displaced and living with little food and safe drinking water," said Crystal Wells, East Africa spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.   "When the clinics they depend on for care are destroyed, it means they have nowhere to go when they need treatment with tragic consequences," she added.   * Access the Lancet study: Armed conflict and child mortality in Africa: a geospatial analysis: http://bit.ly/2PWiznZ http://tmsnrt.rs/2ouph8e Visit the related web page
	Is Intentional Starvation the Future of War? by Jane Ferguson New Yorker, agencies   July 2018   The war between the Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has put millions at risk of starvation, reports by Jane Ferguson.   The malnutrition ward of the Al-Sabaeen hospital, in Yemen's capital, Sana'a, is a quiet place even when it is busy. Parents speak in murmurs and children are too weak to cry. In a room off a pink-painted hallway, a mother named Salami Ahmed sat cross-legged on a bed, resting her ten-month-old daughter Mateea on her knee. Each of the baby girl's ribs pushed out from underneath a fine layer of skin. The child's eyes stared wide from her gaunt face. Ahmed told me that her husband was a cobbler, and business was bad. 'Some days he comes home with four hundred rials, another day five hundred or a thousand rials', she said, amounts of local currency worth one and a half to four dollars. 'Some days nothing if he has no work. We only buy sugar and tea. Before the war, we could buy other things but now no more. We were already poor and when the war broke out we became even poorer'.   In the room down the hallway, Mohammed Hatem stood over his baby, Shahab Adil, who is also ten months old. Shahab also suffered from malnutrition. Her body appeared much too small for her age. 'It's happening everywhere in Yemen', Hatem told me. 'Food prices were already high before the war, and since it started they went sky high'. Back in his village, several hours drive away, there were many more cases of malnutrition, he said. Few villagers can afford to take a taxi to the capital for treatment. For many, the cost of fuel puts even short bus rides beyond reach.   The U.S. and Saudi-backed war here has increased the price of food, cooking gas, and other fuel, but it is the disappearance of millions of jobs that has brought more than eight million people to the brink of starvation and turned Yemen into the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. There is sufficient food arriving in ports here, but endemic unemployment means that almost two-thirds of the population struggle to buy the food their families need. In this way, hunger here is entirely man-made: no drought or blight has caused it.   In 2015, alarmed by the growing power of a Shia armed group known as the Houthis in its southern neighbor, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition of Arab states and launched a military offensive in Yemen to defeat the rebels. The Saudis believed that the Houthis were getting direct military support from the kingdom's regional archrival, Iran, and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. The offensive quickly pushed the Houthis out of some southern areas, but then faltered; the rebels still control much of the country, including the capital.   A blockade of the rebel-held area is intermittently enforced by the Saudis, with all shipments of food and other imported goods subject to U.N. or coalition approval and inspections, driving up prices. Saudi-led aerial bombing has destroyed infrastructure and businesses, and has devastated the economy inside rebel-held areas.   The Saudi-led coalition, which controls Yemen's airspace, has enforced an almost complete media blackout by preventing reporters and human-rights researchers from taking U.N. relief flights into Houthi-controlled areas for much of the last two years. In June, I reached the capital by entering the coalition-controlled part of Yemen and then, travelling by road, crossed the front line disguised as a Yemeni woman in local dress and a face veil.   On June 13th, while I was in Houthi-controlled territory, the Saudi-led coalition launched a military offensive in the port city of Hodeidah. The attack demonstrated the far-reaching humanitarian consequences of economic disruption caused by the war. Yemen typically imports more than eighty per cent of its food, and no other port in the rebel-held parts of the country comes close to being able to handle the amount of cargo that Hodeidah can. The port is also an important strategic prize. Losing Hodeidah would cut the Houthis off from the outside world, most likely marking the beginning of the end for their movement.   It is also a crucial source of income for the rebels, as the Houthi-controlled government collects docking and offloading fees. Were the Saudis to capture Hodeidah, it would put them in a much stronger position over the Houthis in peace negotiations.   The Saudis have ignored pleas from every humanitarian organization operating in Yemen to halt the offensive in Hodeidah. The groups warn that disrupting the port's operations will spark food-price increases and famine in areas under Houthi control.   'I would say if it's closed for a matter of two weeks you will start seeing an impact on the streets', Frank McManus, the country director for the New York-based International Rescue Committee, told me. Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment.   Human-rights groups question the legality of the Hodeidah offensive, as well as the Saudi-led blockade and aerial bombing campaign, on the grounds that they have created widespread hunger.   The Geneva Conventions prohibit the destruction of 'objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population', Alex de Waal, the author of the book 'Mass Starvation', which analyzes recent man-made famines, argued that economic war is being waged in Yemen. 'The focus on food supplies over all and humanitarian action is actually missing the bigger point', de Waal told me. 'It's an economic war with famine as a consequence'.   Under international law, waging economic warfare is more of a gray area than the use of overt siege-and-starvation tactics. Stopping activities that are essential for people to feed themselves, such as closing off businesses and work opportunities, is not explicitly covered.   'That is a weakness in the law', said de Waal, who is also the executive director of the World Peace Foundation. 'The coalition air strikes are not killing civilians in large numbers but they might be destroying the market and that kills many, many more people'.   The world's most recent man-made famine was in South Sudan, last year. There, the use of food as a weapon was clearer, with civilians affiliated with certain tribes driven from their homes, and food sources by soldiers and rebels determined to terrify them into never coming back. In the epicenter of the famine, starving South Sudanese families told stories of mass murder and rape. Entire communities fled into nearby swamps and thousands starved to death or drowned. Gunmen burned markets to the ground, stole food, and killed civilians who were sneaking out of the swamps to find food.   In Syria, the images of starving children in rebel-controlled Eastern Ghouta, at the end of last year, were the latest evidence of the Assad regime's use of siege-and-starvation tactics. With the support of Russia and Iran, the Syrian government has starved civilian enclaves as a way to pressure them to surrender. In Yemen, none of the warring parties seem to be systematically withholding food from civilians. Instead, the war is making it impossible for most civilians to earn the money they need buy food and exposing a loophole in international law. There is no national-food-availability crisis in Yemen, but a massive economic one.   The situation in Yemen goes to the heart of the major legal dispute regarding economic warfare: intent. Military and political figures can claim that they never intended to starve a population, and argue that hunger is an unintended side-effect of war for which they do not bear legal responsibility.   Despite this, some human-rights lawyers argue that a case can be made against the kinds of economic warfare being waged in Yemen. All of the parties are aware of the human impact of their tactics; continued refusal to modify them, despite warning of a famine, could leave some culpable.   'If you move from negligence to recklessness and you continue with recklessness in the knowledge of the impact it's having on the civilian population, eventually a judge will be able to see intent on your part', Wayne Jordash, the head of Global Rights Compliance, a Hague-based human-rights group that monitors violations of the laws of war, told me.   The issue of legal culpability could extend to Washington, D.C. The Obama and Trump Administrations have provided support for the Saudi-led coalition since it intervened in Yemen. Since 2015, U.S. forces have refuelled coalition jets between bombing raids and provided intelligence assistance and logistical support. Washington has also sold Saudi Arabia and their ally the United Arab Emirates billions of dollars worth of weapons.   As weddings, markets, and civilian homes have been bombed, and the U.N. has verified that more than six thousand civilians have died, a growing bipartisan campaign to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen has grown in Congress. In a rare bipartisan push in the Senate, a resolution that would have ended all U.S. military support for the war in Yemen was narrowly defeated in March.   Human-rights groups say that if intent can be proved, some types of Saudi-led air strikes may be found to have violated the Geneva Conventions, because they make it difficult for Yemenis to access food.   Along the Western coastline of rebel-held areas, Saudi-led air strikes often target fishing boats that pilots apparently and, most likely, falsely believe could be smuggling weapons to the Houthis from Iran. More than two hundred boats have been destroyed, and fishing communities suffer high levels of malnutrition and starvation.   Saada, the Houthis ancestral home and stronghold in the country's northwest, has been pummelled by air strikes. Refugees from that area, who moved into makeshift camps near the border with Saudi Arabia after the strikes, told me that coalition forces then bombed their settlements.   A man named Jabr Ali Al Ghaferi said that his wife was hit with shrapnel and died a few days later. 'The air strikes targeted the gate and the bridge which connected the camp to the market', he said.   Martha Mundy, a retired professor of anthropology from the London School of Economics, has, along with Yemeni colleagues, analyzed the location of air strikes throughout the war. She said their records show that civilian areas and food supplies are being intentionally targeted.   'If one looks at certain areas where they say the Houthis are strong, particularly Saada, then it can be said that they are trying to disrupt rural life and that really verges on scorched earth', Mundy told me. 'In Saada, they hit the popular, rural weekly markets time and again. It's very systematic targeting of that'.   The Houthis add to the humanitarian challenges by making it difficult for aid agencies to work in the areas that they control. Mistrust of foreign aid organizations, particularly Western ones, has strained relationships. Aid workers who asked not to be named said that the Houthis have imposed increased restrictions on their operations in recent months. To enter Houthi-controlled areas, workers need special visas from Houthi officials, which are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. After they arrive, they need permission to leave the capital and travel to refugee camps. 'Every day they have different requirements', a staff member of one international aid group complained.   Aid agencies also complain about how the Houthis allow aid to be distributed. At least one major aid organization had to cancel a project after the Houthis said that they did not believe it was necessary and declined to grant permits. A second major aid organization said that the Houthis tried to gain control over the distribution of food and decide themselves who gets what.   The Saudis are increasingly aware of the public-relations nightmare that their war in Yemen has become, as images of starving Yemeni children make it into the international press. The kingdom has hired U.S. and U.K. based public-relations firms to mount a campaign pointing out that the Saudis and their partners have promised to provide billions of dollars of aid to the Yemeni people once they have been 'liberated' from the Houthis.   Jordash, the human-rights lawyer, said that even if aid is provided in one part of Yemen, it does not absolve the parties of violating international humanitarian law in other parts of the country.   Whether or not the Hodeidah offensive disrupts food supplies, the hunger that grips Yemenis will continue to claim victims, particularly children.   De Waal argued that man-made famines will become increasingly common aspects of modern conflict, and said that defining war crimes related to food and hunger more clearly will become increasingly urgent. Hunger and preventable diseases have always killed many more people than bombs and bullets, he said, but if they are a direct result of military strategy, they should not be considered the product of chance.   The war in Yemen and other wars being waged today are forcing a new legal debate about whether the lives of many people killed in conflict are lost or taken. 'It is possible that they could weasel out from legal responsibility', de Waal said, referring to commanders in such a conflict. 'But there should be no escape from moral responsibility'.   http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-yemen-intentional-starvation-the-future-of-war http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/09/14/how-congress-can-end-the-war-in-yemen/ http://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/opinion/sunday/war-yemen-iran-united-states.html   July 2017   States must act now to fulfil famine victims' right to food, by UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. (OHCHR)   The tragic reality of famine around the world has revealed that many States are failing to uphold their legal responsibilities, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, told the UN General Assembly in New York. She also called for an urgent shift in thinking away from crisis reactions and toward famine prevention.   'Contrary to popular belief, casualties resulting directly from combat usually make up only a small proportion of deaths in conflict zones, with most individuals in fact perishing from hunger and disease', Ms. Elver said in her annual report to the General Assembly.   The Special Rapporteur said that this year the world has faced the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations. Around 20 million people have faced famine and 'devastating' starvation in crises in north-east Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen, all of which had arisen from conflict.   Another estimated 70 million people in 45 countries currently require emergency food assistance, an increase of 40 per cent from 2015, she said, also highlighting the serious starvation and severe right to food violations currently affecting the Rohingya people.   Ms. Elver hailed the 'essential' work of the international humanitarian system in getting food to conflict victims and lowering death tolls.   But she said States and other parties involved in conflicts needed to recognize their own duty to act, and above all, avoid using hunger as a weapon of war. The right to food is an unconditional human right and legal entitlement for all people, not a discretionary option, she stressed.   'The human right to adequate food is a core right, indispensable for the enjoyment of all other human rights', Ms Elver stated. 'Freedom from hunger is accepted as part of customary international law, rendering it binding on all States'.   'It is crucial that the international community understands that it is an international crime to intentionally block access to food, food aid, and to destroy production of food. Such acts as crimes against humanity, or war crimes'.   She added that the most serious cases should be referred to the International Criminal Court for investigation and possible prosecution.   'If the international community is serious about the imperative character of the right to food and the eradication of food insecurity in times of war and peace, steps must be taken to encourage the implementation of existing standards and to codify international law principles applicable to the right to food', the expert said.   The Special Rapporteur urged all governments to focus on long-term policies to break the vicious cycle of recurring famines.   'Human rights violations, war crimes, repression and gross forms of inequality are conditions that frequently give rise to famine', she said. 'The attention and commitment of the international community must, as a matter of the highest priority, be directed toward eliminating the root causes of famine, and not limited to ad hoc responses to the agonizing symptoms of the latest food emergency'. http://bit.ly/2OD2Nxt   http://hilalelver.org/ http://starvationaccountability.org/news-and-events/story-in-focus-interview-with-hilal-elver-un-special-rapporteur-on-the-right-to-food Visit the related web page
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