South Sudan: The Politics of Starvation as a Weapon of War
In South Sudan, starvation has emerged as one of the government’s most powerful tools of war against its own people. In June of 2025, the United Nations warned that more than half of the country’s population faced acute food insecurity, including 2.3 million children. Two counties have already slipped into famine, and others are likely to follow without immediate humanitarian intervention. However, this famine differs sharply from those that are naturally occurring. This crisis is not the result of droughts, floods, or any other unpredictable environmental factors; hunger in South Sudan is political. Contemporary famines are overwhelmingly man-made phenomena, shaped by human choices, and often used as weapons in times of conflict. Despite international law declaring the intentional starvation of civilians a war crime, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s administration sees fit to use famine as a weapon of war to consolidate power against his opponents.
The roots of this crisis can be traced to the aftermath of South Sudan’s independence. After decades of conflict under Sudan’s rule, South Sudan emerged as an independent state in 2011. Yet the new nation quickly fell into a brutal civil war. By 2013, political and ethnic tensions between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar erupted and turned violent, leading to fighting along political and ethnic lines. The civil war came to an end in 2020 with the formation of a unity government, though the agreement was fragile and often violated. Despite years of negotiated ceasefires, renewed clashes erupted in 2025. Fighting occurred amongst the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF), the nation’s official military force, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLA/IO), the military division of Vice President Machar’s party. Amidst the conflict, President Kiir reportedly permitted the SSPDF to employ starvation as a tactic of war.
To understand President Kiir’s strategy, one must first examine the logic of forced starvation. This requires looking at the policy of forced starvation itself. Around the world and throughout history, hunger has been used as a military strategy to establish direct control over civilian populations. Forced starvation, according to the Rome Statute, is defined as “depriving [civilians] of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies.” This definition situated starvation as not merely a byproduct of war, but an intentional and prosecutable act.
In South Sudan, this definition manifests clearly; SSPDF troops have repeatedly blocked humanitarian aid, destroyed crops, restricted access to markets, and attacked humanitarian aid workers. The UN stated that aid for 60,000 children could not be delivered due to violence along the White Nile River. Beyond direct violence, deleterious economic policies such as taxation and administrative barriers, have also contributed to the lessening of foreign aid. In 2024, newly implemented taxes and restrictions forced the UN to reduce food airdrops, depleting thousands of people in Upper Nile from life-saving aid; at least 60,000 people lost access to necessary food stuffs.
South Sudan’s hunger crisis has come about due to the violent strategy of President Kiir, who seeks to one-up his political opponent during a time of conflict. This crisis exemplifies the vulnerability of South Sudanese civilians as well as the inability of the international community to protect them. Beyond the borders of South Sudan, this famine raises the question of what accountability looks like when starvation is wielded as a political weapon. The lack of international intervention to the South Sudanese government’s breach of the Rome statute exposes the gap between legal principles and their real-world application. In this fashion, South Sudan can be viewed as a test case for how the international community responds to the criminalization of starvation in modern warfare.