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I was able to find out that e.g. during the 2016 siege of Fallujah, which was occupied by ISIS at the time, around 140 civilians starved. The estimate given by Wikipedia seems to come from HRW (which has the perhaps illustrative sub-title as to how that happened: "Government Forces Block Aid; ISIS Bars Civilian Flight").

So, were there similar or larger events, say in the past 30 years? If so, what level of international condemnation did they receive?

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    Sieges in the classical sense have been relatively rare in recent decades, but a lot of people died of starvation or disease during wars. But that was often because of farming coming to a standstill, external help not reaching the people or refugees being forced to live in unsustainably large camps - because of the fighting going on, but not because of the warring parties really blocking supplies. You might want to state what exactly you want to include in your question.
    – ccprog
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 18:40
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    My guess is that a wider understanding would get the war in Darfur with 200,000–500.000 deaths at the top of the list.
    – ccprog
    Commented Oct 21, 2023 at 18:41
  • You have two separate questions. (1) What is the largest deaths by starvation in a siege? (2) What level of condemnation did a specific siege receive? I suggest asking these as two separate questions.
    – user103496
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 2:19
  • This might be more a history question.
    – NoDataDumpNoContribution
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 11:12
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    @sfxedit: history SE often rejects questions on recent history. Note that I've asked about the relatively recent past. Because if go back more, there's Biafra, which I knew about. And it was a rather declared siege.
    – got trolled too much this week
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 15:49

2 Answers 2

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Yemen

The Yemen blockade by Saudi Arabia aligned forces, along with Houthi interference with aid deliveries, is claimed to have contributed to the deaths of 130000 from 2016 to December 2020.

Since 2016, a food insecurity crisis has been ongoing in Yemen which began during the Yemeni Civil War.[10] The UN estimates that the war has caused an estimated 130,000 deaths from indirect causes which include lack of food, health services, and infrastructure as of December 2020.[11] In 2018, Save the Children estimated that 85,000 children have died due to starvation in the three years prior. *

Same claim repeated on an NGO relief website.

It received some/quite a bit of attention, and some/quite a bit of condemnation, but one can't say much came out of it. If things have gotten better it's mostly because the belligerents chilled out for other reasons, of a more military/diplomatic than humanitarian nature.

No, "the West" did not shine, the Houthis being Iran-backed, and Saudi being oil-rich, efforts to throttle them were not too closely scrutinized.

Syria (2016)

The United Nations human rights chief warned on Monday that thousands of people may have died of starvation during sieges affecting nearly half a million people in war-torn Syria.

That's more on the Syrian government + its main backer, Russia. Hard to get much done there as well, UN veto et all.

* see comments, numbers do seem a bit sloppy.

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    The Wikipedia claims you simply copy-pasted here seem somewhat inconsistent. If there've been 130,000 deaths through Dec 2020 and 85,000 deaths of children under 5 in the 3 years to 2018, then Deaths of persons over 5 in 2015-18 and Deaths of all persons 2018 to Dec 2020 sum to only 45,000. (I suspect the Save the Children 85,000 estimate is exaggerated and explains this inconsistency.)
    – user103496
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 2:07
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    Syrian civil war was fully inspired by the West (nothing good came out of it and nothing could). USW still illegally occupies a part of country. How can this even blamed on Syrian government in 2023.
    – alamar
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 7:47
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    @alamar: depends who did most sieging (and who might have prevented civilians getting out or getting resupplied). The answer alas doesn't detail that.
    – got trolled too much this week
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 11:14
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    @alamar: Serious citation needed there. The civil war started as part of the Arab Spring movement in 2011-2012 (depending on how you determine the point at which widespread protests against the Baathist gov't transitioned into civil war), with minimal Western involvement. Various outside countries got involved over time (e.g. the U.S. in 2014, the Russians in 2015), but aside from your weasel wording about "inspired" (which can mean anything), the origins are not directly associated with any western power.
    – ShadowRanger
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 17:09
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    @alamar what is USW?
    – SirHawrk
    Commented Oct 23, 2023 at 6:34
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Tigray had 96000-218000 famine-related deaths by Dec 2022, according to Emnet Negash (2023-03-27):

Applying a similar correction on our earlier calculations for Tigray (starvation adjusted to 38% of the calculations) results in an estimate of 96k to 218k famine-related deaths by December 2022. Adding 30k-100k deaths due to lack of healthcare (hence, halving our earlier estimate) and 36k-60k deaths due to direct killings of civilians (massacres, bombardments, …), ends up with a total estimated civilian death rate in Tigray of 162k to 378k people.

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  • TBH that Negash guy has some pieces in which he refers to the Ethiopian army as "invading army" in Tigray, so, he seem to take quite a nationalistic Tigrayan viewpoint, even if he works (or worked) in the West. I'd prefer some UN etc. estimates to his.
    – got trolled too much this week
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 3:27
  • This seems to corroborate those assessments, but I find it odd there's not much UN on this. Ethiopia doesn't have that much protection at the UN, although it has some.
    – got trolled too much this week
    Commented Oct 22, 2023 at 3:41

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