People in the Syrian town of Madaya are still starving to death. A U.N. aid convoy was finally allowed into the town last month, but it wasn’t enough. Secretary of State John Kerry says that’s because the Syrian government has surrounded the town and is not allowing enough aid in. Anti-government rebels have also besieged towns in Syria, which Kerry called “directly contrary to the law of war.” Is starvation a war crime? NPR’s Kelly McEvers talks to law professor Beth Van Schaack to explain.

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KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

The horrific conditions in the Syrian town of Madaya have gotten attention from all over the world. Still, people there are starving to death. A U.N. aid convoy was finally allowed into the town last month, but it wasn’t enough. Doctors Without Borders says 16 more people have recently died of starvation in Madaya. Secretary of State John Kerry says that’s because the Syrian government has surrounded the town and is not allowing enough aid in. Antigovernment rebels have also besieged towns in Syria. Here’s Kerry.

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JOHN KERRY: People are dying. Children are suffering not as a result of an accident of war but as the consequence of an intentional tactic. Surrender or starve. And that tactic is directly contrary to the law of war.

MCEVERS: We asked Beth Van Schaack about that claim. She’s a law professor and consults the U.S. government on war crimes. She says even though intentional starvation is a war crime, there haven’t been many prosecutions for that crime.

BETH VAN SCHAACK: There’s not much precedent that I have been able to find. We do have a lot of precedent governing sieges following World War II. There were some prosecutions, and coming out of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, there were prosecutions of various sieges but not specifically with respect to starvation itself.

MCEVERS: So it sounds like if someone were to eventually make a case for starvation as a war crime being committed in Syria, it wouldn’t be easy.

VAN SCHAACK: It would not be easy. I mean, the charge itself exists. There’s not good precedent, as we’ve discussed. The real challenge is that there is not now a court that has jurisdiction over this crime. Obviously there’s no international court dedicated to Syria as we had with respect to the war in the former Yugoslavia.

 

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