 "Starvation, malnutrition and death: How Gaza is heading towards a famine")
Gaza has been under Israel’s attack for four months now. The death toll in the enclave has surpassed 30,000, this includes thousands of children and women. The world’s most densely populated place has run out of clean water and food. Now it’s staring at a famine.
Famine is imminent in northern Gaza where 70 per cent of the population is already suffering from catastrophic levels of hunger, a United Nations-backed report said Monday.
We take a look at the report and how real the threat is.
What does the report on Gaza say?
According to the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an initiative of more than a dozen UN agencies, regional bodies and aid groups, the entire population of Gaza is experiencing high levels of acute food shortage with around 1.1 million people or half the population living through catastrophic food insecurity.
“Famine is now projected and imminent in the North Gaza and Gaza Governorates and is expected to become manifest during the projection period from mid-March 2024 to May 2024,” it said.
Acute hunger and malnutrition have already “far exceeded” the threshold for famine in northern Gaza and the IPC has warned of a “major acceleration of death and malnutrition”, reports CNN.
This is the “highest number of people facing catastrophic hunger ever recorded… anywhere, anytime,” by the IPC, said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
The famine is projected to occur if the conflict escalates, including the impending ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah and if the hostilities continue to block the flow of humanitarian aid to parts of Gaza where people reside, the IPC report added.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe crisis has been “entirely manmade” and “preventable” and is caused because Israel obstructed aid and destruction of Gaza, it said.
What is a famine and when is it declared?
Famine is described by the UN as a situation where a substantial part of the population of an area is unable to access adequate food, leading to widespread malnutrition and loss of life by starvation and disease, reports Al-Jazeera.
Acute food insecurity is when people’s lives or livelihoods are in danger because of lack of food.
The situation is assessed by the IPC, which uses a five-tier system to determine if a famine should be declared in a region. A famine is declared when the fifth tier is reached. The fourth tier is an “emergency and the third is a “crisis”.
For the IPC to declare famine, at least 20 per cent of the population must be suffering extreme food shortages… with one in three children acutely malnourished… and two of every 10,000 people, or four out of 10,000 children per day dying from starvation, malnutrition, and disease.
Malnutrition occurs if an individual does not have enough food to eat or if they eat an excess of the wrong kind of food. Starvation is a process leading to death if an individual does not get enough calories.
“So hunger becomes severe malnutrition, which leads to starvation, which leads to death. When deaths occur within a certain population, especially of children, due to starvation, this could become a famine,” Catherine Bertini, an emeritus professor of international affairs at Syracuse University, told The Washington Post.
Also read: 'Famine eats away at our flesh': How hunger has gripped the people of Gaza
How bad is the situation in Gaza?
Gaza has a population of 2.3 million. About half of it – 1.1 million – in the enclave are facing “catastrophic hunger”. That is double the figure deemed at risk in December.
The IPC said malnutrition is probably already at famine levels. It did not have enough data on death rates in Gaza, but estimated residents would be dying at famine scale imminently, reports Reuters. It said children under four may already be.
At least 25 people, including children and babies, have died from starvation and dehydration in the north, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
People have started scavenging and eating animal feed and grass in desperation. The lack of clean water has left Gazans with no choice but to drink polluted water.
Starving mothers are unable to produce enough milk to feed their babies and parents beg for infant formula at overwhelmed health facilities, parents and doctors were quoted as saying by CNN.
What about aid to Gaza?
An estimated 500 trucks of food and aid are required daily to meet the needs of Gaza’s population. However, since the Israel-Hamas conflict began after the 7 October attack, these shipments have seen a fall.
The 300 trucks that entered Gaza on 28 November were the most in a day since the war started, according to the United Nations. In February, 20 or fewer trucks entered the enclave in seven days, reports The Washington Post.
In recent weeks, Israel has been blocking the delivery of aid supplies including food to the strip. On Sunday, the first aid trucks entered northern Gaza in months, according to an Al-Jazeera report.
The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell has accused Israel of provoking famine in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war. “In Gaza, we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people,” he said at the opening of a conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza in Brussels.
“The support is there waiting. Trucks are stopped, people are dying,” he remarked, adding that aid delivery by sea and air was only necessary because the “natural” way of delivering aid by land was “artificially closed” by Israel.
What is Israel saying?
Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CNN in an interview on Sunday that his country’s policy was to let as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as possible. “Our policy is to not have famine, but to be the entry of humanitarian support as needed, and as much as is needed.”
He shifted the blame on Hamas, accusing the group of looting relief supplies.
“We provide minimal humanitarian aid,” the Israeli leader said at a press conference in January. “If we want to achieve our war goals, we give the minimal aid.”
Where have there been recent famines?
In February 2017, the United Nations declared a famine in South Sudan, saying that 100,000 people faced starvation. A famine was declared in Somalia in July 2011, where 250,000 people, half of them under 5, died in that famine, The Washington Post reported.
Malnutrition is rising across the world. A quarter-billion people grapple with severe hunger and malnutrition, a 100 per cent increase in the past five years, according to a report in TIME last September.
With inputs from agencies
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