Former LLM Human Rights Fellow Tamar Luster (2017–2018) has published a new article in the Harvard International Law Journal, "Litigating Slow Violence: Deprivation in Gaza, Humanitarian Aid, and the Limits of International Humanitarian Law."

Tamar, LL.M. ’18, was a student in Columbia Law School's Human Rights Clinic and graduated as a James Kent Scholar. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, where she co-teaches transitional justice. A lawyer by training, she has worked extensively on social and economic rights and international humanitarian law in governmental and non-governmental settings, served as a consultant to international organizations, and led legal clinics in Israel. Her doctoral research, under the supervision of Professor Eliav Lieblich, examines the systematic denial of civilians' basic needs during armed conflict—a phenomenon she terms "deprivation atrocities"—through the lenses of international law and transitional justice. 
 

This article focuses on two core obligations of international humanitarian law: the obligation to allow and facilitate humanitarian aid and the prohibition of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. Through a critical analysis of the Israeli Supreme Court's March 2025 judgment on humanitarian aid to Gaza, it argues that these norms, while ostensibly designed to counter deprivation, can also be invoked by belligerents to entrench and obscure it. The article further highlights the role of temporality in shaping both legal interpretation and the lived experience of prolonged deprivation.