Recently, Switzerland submitted an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The proposed amendment to Article 8 would make starvation of civilians a war crime in non-international armed conflicts (NIAC) — it is already a war crime in international armed conflicts (IAC).

The amendment aims to stigmatize the use of starvation and is also a response to the shifting landscape of armed conflicts over the past five years, in particular the globalization of NIACs, and the rapid increase of the use of starvation as a weapon in those conflicts. Recent data from the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization indicates that 821 million people face “chronic food deprivation,” much of which has been caused or exacerbated by armed conflicts. Yemen is the most striking example of the growing food insecurity crisis caused by armed conflicts — though it should be noted that while Yemen is a signatory to the Rome Statute it has yet to ratify it.

The war in Yemen, as it exists today, began in 2015 ostensibly as a conflict between the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi and Houthi rebels aligned with former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Over 90,000 people have been killed, two million more have been displaced thus far, and sixty-six percent of all Yeminis — sixteen million people — are on the brink of famine. This mass starvation disaster is a direct result of the civil war — armed forces in the war have seized, stockpiled, and blocked relief food shipments to starving civilians.

From the outset, however, the civil war in Yemen drew in other powerful international actors from across the region with their own agendas — stretching the boundary between NIAC and IAC to the near breaking point. Throughout the conflict the Houthi rebels have been perceived to be aligned with and supported by Iran, while the Hadi government has been supported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. This winter’s UN brokered peace talks nominally resulted in an order for Houthi rebels to retreat. However, following delays to goals set out by the UN, the conflict has started to regain steam.

In August, fighting broke out in the southern city of Aden between fractions of the coalition that fought the Houthis in support of the Hadi government. The conflict is between supporters of President Hadi backed by Saudi Arabia and separatists vying for an independent south Yemen backed by the UAE. The fighting has been dubbed “a civil war within a civil war” but is simply another expression of the globalization of the NIAC in Yemen.

The civil war in Yemen is just one example of a conflict that is nominally a NIAC, which powerful international actors have exploited to pursue their interests. States like Iran, UAE, and Saudi Arabia face decidedly less scrutiny from the international community by engaging with each other by proxy through another state’s civil war. Switzerland’s proposal to amend Article 8 of the Rome Statute to make starvation a war crime is an example of one response the international community can use to address the increasing globalization of NIAC — begin to import IAC rules into NIAC. This would bring States that have shielded themselves behind the categorization of NIAC within the jurisdiction of the ICC and hopefully hold them accountable.