WHAT: A hunger strike is defined as a deliberate refusal to eat, undertaken in protest against imprisonment, improper treatment, objectionable conditions, etc. (dictionary.com)
HOW: They usually start as an act of protest in order to achieve a specific goal, such as policy change or provoking feelings of guilt or embarrassment in others; mainly government officials or other powerful people.
WHY: Even going way back in history, people would use fasting (hunger strikes) in order to induce guilt in their wrongdoers so that they would be publicly embarrassed into finding an agreement or solution.
WHO: As stated earlier, they were used to induce guilt in individuals. Because they were normally used in order to achieve a policy change etc., they were often aimed at higher-ups (especially goverment officials) because they had the superiority to reach an agreement.
DURATIONS: There are many different versions of hunger strikes or fasting. They are used for many things and can last anywhere from a couple of hours to about 100 days (or however long the body can live off of itself).
SOLUTIONS: Instead of letting the strikers die in captivity, many people or prisons resorted to force-feeding, which entails a rubber tube being inserted down one's throat into their stomach. Force-feeding was prohibited in 1975, but recent records and information show that the military used this on about 1/5th of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay up until a few years ago.
GOALS: As you can infer from the rest of this information, these hunger strikes are usually employed in order to achieve a specific goal. They are still very alive today and are used to protest some sort of policy or in order to induce guilt in individuals.
> Some of this information was taken from time.com, in a recent article giving a brief history on hunger strikes.
maybe you could include a section about some of the most well-known hunger strikes and how they ended up.
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