"It takes about two months for a healthy adult to die of outright or frank starvation.

Deaths from starvation typically have a complex etiology

with different causes, including malnutrition, infection and

exhaustion, combined to kill individuals. Starvation can be

the outcome of seeking to degrade or humiliate a person or persons

with the aim of demonstrating mastery or forcing them to do something

such as abandon their homes. Hunger can be inflicted on people as punishment

because of their identity or because they have refused to surrender.

What forced starvation and genocide have in common is that those in authority 

just didn’t care whether those in their care lived or died. Both are primarily

political projects that consider (some) human lives expendable or worthless."

Alex de Waal – Mass starvation – The history and future of famine