Famine has struck in the Gaza governorate in the strip of the same name, the UN found in a report on 22 August, citing an analysis on the Integrated Food Security (IPC) phase classification.
According to IPC, more than half a million people in the Gaza strip are in “catastrophic conditions,” including hunger and poverty. A further 1.07 million (54 per cent of the population) were classified as being in a state of emergency (IPC stage 4), with 396,000 in crisis.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the results of the analysis revealed no mystery:
“This is a man-made disaster, a moral indictment – and a failure of all humanity.”
Guterres says famine is characterised not only by a lack of food, but also by the destruction of systems necessary for human survival.
The UN predicts the famine could spread from the Gaza governorate to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis provinces in the coming weeks. The organisation’s agencies are calling for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza immediately, saying hundreds of thousands of people in the region remain without food for days.
The UN is also calling on Israel” as an occupying state ” to provide food and medicine to the local population. Its agencies are also demanding an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages taken by Hamas (recognised as terrorist in the US and EU) on 7 October 2023.
“By the end of September, more than 640,000 people in the Gaza Strip will face a “catastrophic” level of food insecurity, classified as Phase 5 Individual Food Concern (IPC). An additional 1.14 million people in the enclave will be in Phase 4, with a further 396,000 people facing ‘crisis’ Phase 3 conditions,″ the forecast said.”
The UN points to the classification by which the stage of food insecurity is established:
“The most extreme category is triggered when three critical thresholds – extreme hunger, acute malnutrition and hunger-related death – are breached. The latest analysis now confirms, based on sufficient evidence, that these criteria have been met, UN agencies reported.”
The press office quotes UN emergency coordinator Tom Fletcher as saying the situation could have been prevented “if we had been authorised”.
The UN notes that this is the first official recognition of famine in the Middle East since IPC began observing.
The current war in Gaza began with a Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages. Israel’s operation in Gaza, which was a response to the attack, resulted in widespread destruction and the deaths of tens of thousands of residents of the territory (these are figures from the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, which do not categorise the dead into militants and civilians). Most of the hostages were released as a result of negotiations, but several dozen of them died in Gaza.