A famine has officially been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods, according to a UN-backed group.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
The IPC defines famine as a situation in which at least one in five households has an extreme lack of food and face starvation and destitution, resulting in extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition and death.
Famine is when an area has:
– More than 20% of households facing extreme food shortages.
– More than 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition.
– A daily mortality rate that exceeds two per 10,000 people, or four per 10,000 children under five.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
But Israel’s foreign ministry has criticised the report, and said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
By Adam Parsons, Middle East correspondent
This is only the fifth time in the past two decades that the IPC system has been used to confirm a famine – and the first outside Africa. It’s not a threshold that is easily passed.
So what will happen? In fact, better to start with what won’t happen. There will be no sympathetic “mea culpa” from the Israeli government.
It will inevitably blame Hamas for starting a war that has led to a shortage of food, say that agencies are refusing to distribute aid, and further claim that Hamas is now stealing a big proportion of the aid that gets into the Gaza Strip.
More fundamentally, there will be those who allege that the United Nations is being played – saying that there is no famine, but rather a shortage of food that exacerbates existing health conditions.
In fact, it is a classic sign of famine that vulnerable people are the first to suffer.
And then the government will probably accuse the world of double standards – shocked by the plight of Gazans but not fighting to get aid to the 20 hostages who are still believed to be alive and in captivity in Gaza.
The Israelis already believe they have only one steadfast supporter left in the world, and that is the United States – the one friend they really couldn’t do without.
So far, there are no signs that America’s support is fading. Ambassador Mike Huckabee has laid the blame for hunger entirely on Hamas.
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
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