C) POLITICAL CAUSES

The influence of politics

16. Depriving people of food has been used throughout history, and is still used today, as a political or military weapon. In some cases this is a veritable crime against humanity.

There have been many such cases in the 20th century, such as:

a) Stalin's systematic withholding of food from the Ukrainian peasants around 1930, causing the deaths of some 8 million people. This crime, which remained unknown, or almost, for a long time, was confirmed with the opening up of the Kremlin archives.

b) The recent sieges in Bosnia, particularly of Sarajevo, when even humanitarian aid itself was held hostage.

c) The resettlement of whole populations in Ethiopia to enable the one-party government to gain political control. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of the famine caused by forced migration and by abandoning the crops.

d) The cutting off of food to Biafra in the Seventies was used as a weapon against political secession.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has helped to remove one of the causes of civil wars, the provocation by direct Soviet intervention, or reaction to its intervention including: revolutions resolving nothing, displaced populations, the breakdown of organised agriculture, tribal strife and genocide. However many situations still remain, or have re-emerged, which could give rise to the same phenomena once again. Even though possibly not on the same scale, these are no less damaging to the people. Today's situations are mainly a matter of resurgent nationalism being fostered by a few ideologically driven regimes, local repercussions of struggles for influence between the developed countries, and power struggles in certain countries, especially in Africa.

Also noteworthy are the embargoes, imposed for political reasons, against countries such as Cuba or Iraq. These are regimes, deemed to be a threat to international security, which keep their own people hostage. Indeed, it is the people themselves who are the first to fall victim to such acts of force. This is why the costs, in humanitarian terms, of such decisions must be carefully taken into account. Furthermore, some leaders play on the misery of their people, brought about by their actions, in order to force the international community to resume supplies. These are situations that have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis in the spirit of the World Declaration on Nutrition which states that "Food aid must not be denied because of political affiliation, geographic location, gender, age, ethnic, tribal or religious identity"(²⁸).

Lastly, political actions can also have repercussions in terms of hunger. On a number of occasions we have seen developed countries, with agricultural surpluses, exporting these surpluses (for example wheat) free of cost to mis-developing countries whose staple diet is rice. The purpose is to underpin domestic commodity prices. These free exports have had very negative effects, altering the people's eating habits and discouraging the local farmers, who need to be strongly encouraged to produce more.