Organised Famine: Conflict-Induced Food Insecurity, State Agency, and the Failure of Accountability in South Sudan and Yemen

Famine in conflict settings is often treated as an environmental or humanitarian crisis, yet it is frequently politically produced. The concept of organised famine captures how state and armed actors deliberately structure conditions of food insecurity as part of conflict strategy. Moving beyond a descriptive account, the manuscript situates the political economy of famine—focusing on state agency, conflict-induced deprivation, and international humanitarian law—in South Sudan and Yemen within broader debates on African political order, state formation, and institutional design. Anchored in South Sudan and Yemen, with historical comparison to Biafra and Ethiopia, the study addresses three interrelated questions: through which military, administrative, and economic mechanisms parties to the South Sudan conflict have deployed food insecurity as a weapon of war, and what evidentiary standards are required for accountability under international humanitarian law (IHL); how the political economy of humanitarian response—including donor interests, access negotiations, and aid diversion—interacts with strategies that sustain famine conditions; and what accountability mechanisms exist under IHL and the Rome Statute for the crime of starvation, and why these have systematically failed in the South Sudanese and Yemeni contexts. Methodologically, the study combines epidemiological analysis of IPC food security data (2013–2023), conflict event analysis using ACLED mapped against patterns of food insecurity, legal analysis of Rome Statute Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) and customary IHL, interviews with humanitarian practitioners, and comparative analysis with Biafra (1967–1970) and Ethiopian famines. The contribution lies not only in explaining specific national and historical cases, but in c