القاعدة ذات الصلة
Colombia
Practice Relating to Rule 53. Starvation as a Method of Warfare
Colombia’s Basic Military Manual (1995) states that it is prohibited to use starvation of the civilian population as a method of combat “in all armed conflicts”.
Colombia, Derecho Internacional Humanitario – Manual Básico para las Personerías y las Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia, Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, 1995, p. 49.
In 2007, in the Constitutional Case No. C-291/07, the Plenary Chamber of Colombia’s Constitutional Court stated that the prohibition of starvation in the 1977 Additional Protocol II “has attained customary status, mainly due to its impact on State practice and on conflicts in the last decades”.
Colombia, Constitutional Court, Constitutional Case No. C-291/07, Judgment of 25 April 2007, p. 69.
The Court also held that an “element of the principle of distinction is the prohibition against attacking objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, which includes the prohition to starve civilians”.
Colombia, Constitutional Court, Constitutional Case No. C-291/07, Judgment of 25 April 2007, p. 96.
(footnote in original omitted)In 1994, in reply to a questionnaire from the House of Representatives, Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs quoted Article 14 of the 1977 Additional Protocol II. It added: “What this Article prohibits is the starvation of civilians.”
Colombia, Presidency of the Republic, Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, National Plan for the Dissemination of IHL, Reply of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Questionnaire No. 012 of Commission II of the House of Representatives, 7 October 1994, p. 6.
The Report on the Practice of Colombia refers to a draft internal working paper in which the Colombian Government stated that it was prohibited “to make the civilian population suffer from hunger or thirst”.
Report on the Practice of Colombia, 1998, Chapter 4.1, referring to Presidential Council, Proposal of the Government to the Coordinator Guerrillerra Simón Bolívar to humanize war, Draft Internal Working Paper, Part entitled “El Derecho Internacional Humanitario”, § 2(h).
