A U.N.-backed food security group has issued a dire warning: famine has officially now taken hold in northern Gaza and is expected to spread in the coming months.
The world’s leading authority on food insecurity has confirmed a famine in Gaza.
In a report published Friday, the United Nations-backed group of experts finds that over half a million people parts of north Gaza are at risk of dying from starvation, and hundreds of thousands more people face catastrophic shortages as the famine spreads to other areas.
„As this Famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed. The time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading“, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification or IPC report says.
The images of skeletal children in Gaza have already caused widespread protests around the world against the Israeli offensive there, and prompted some of Israel’s most important Western allies to say they will recognize a Palestinian state. The IPC report brings the facts behind those photographs of starvation into stark relief.
It says famine, the most extreme classification of hunger, is occurring in Gaza Governorate and projected to expand to Deir al- Balah and Khan Younis governorates by the end of September.
Describing the situation as a „race against time“, the report says at least 132,000 children under the age of five could die from acute malnutrition in the coming months.
This estimate has doubled since an IPC report in May, showing just how drastically the conditions have worsened in Gaza in recent weeks.
Nearly 55,500 malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women will require an urgent nutrition response.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said Thursday 271 people have so far died in the famine, including 112 children.
This is the first time famine has been confirmed in the Middle East. And it’s happened in a 25-mile-long strip of land, where trucks piled with thousands of tons of food are parked at border crossings.
The Gazans now dying of starvation are never more than a few miles from warehouses filled with food aid that they have no way to reach.
„This is the direct result of months of deliberate restrictions on aid, the destruction of Gaza’s food, health, and water systems, and relentless bombardment“, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, the CEO of Mercy Corps said in response to the statement. „This is a man-made catastrophe, entirely preventable and entirely unconscionable.“
Earlier this month, more than a hundred international organizations, including Caritas Internationalis and Doctors Without Borders, accused Israel of „weaponizing“ aid to help achieve its aims in Gaza.
