Famine had been gripping Gaza for months, and now the United Nations has made it official. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative, or IPC, has confirmed that the Palestinian enclave has more than half a million people who are at the risk of starvation as the war continues.
The IPC's definition of famine, which is also largely accepted around the world, has 3 requirements that need to be fulfilled. It requires 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, 30% of children under five are acutely malnourished and at least two in every 10,000 people die daily from outright starvation. All 3 were met in the case war-torn Gaza.
This is the first time a famine has officially been declared by a United Nations-backed body in the Middle East -- a region plagued with international conflict since decades. Yemen close to the declaration in 2018.
Israel, meanwhile, has shrugged off the report and outrightly denied any such famine in Gaza -- or any of its surrounding regions. Tom Fletcher, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, had pinned the blame on Israel. He said there was "systematic obstruction" of aid deliveries to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
The UN estimates that nearly one million people currently live in the Gaza governorate.
"Over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death," the IPC report said.
It projected famine would spread to the Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis governorates by the end of September, with the number of people starving expected to rise to 641,000.
Media reports, and the death tolls coming out of Gaza, say that children have been hit the hardest by the hunger crisis. n July alone, more than 12,000 children were identified as acutely malnourished -- a six-fold increase since January, according to UN agencies.
"The signs were unmistakable: children with wasted bodies, too weak to cry or eat, babies dying from hunger and preventable disease," said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
The local food system has collapsed, with an estimated 98% of cropland in the Gaza Strip either damaged, inaccessible or both, the IPC said. Livestock is decimated and fishing is banned.
Israel's foreign ministry asserted that a "massive influx of aid" had entered the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, while Israeli defence body COGAT accused the authors of relying on partial data.
The IPC said conditions in the North Gaza Governorate, north of Gaza City, may well be worse, but said it did not have enough data.
