The “imminent” famine in Gaza: how did we get here? | Future Planet

The skeletal legs of a child, civilians desperately searching for food and being bombed, already lethargic babies dying from lack of food, planes dropping food by parachute, dozens of trucks loaded with aid waiting for the doors of the Strip to open to be able to distribute it. “The speed of the tragedy in Gaza is unprecedented,” Ricardo Pires, head of communications for Unicef ​​in New York, tells this newspaper, “it is something we have never seen and if things do not change, this is just the beginning of the disaster.” of malnutrition in Gaza. There is no time,” he insists.

Right now, everyone in Gaza is going hungry, with more than a quarter of its 2.2 million people facing “catastrophic levels of deprivation and lack of food,” according to the UN. Famine, the most critical phase of food insecurity, is “imminent”, especially in the north of the Strip and “almost inevitable” without external intervention in a very short period of time. “Israel has been intentionally starving Palestinians in Gaza since October 8,” UN experts denounced this week.

What is famine?

Hunger and famine are not the same. The severity and magnitude of food insecurity are measured in the so-called Integrated Phase Classification (ICF, in Spanish, IPC, in English), a set of internationally approved and totally independent procedures and tools that establish five phases: minimum, accentuated , crisis, emergency and famine. For it to be officially considered that famine is punishing a population, there are three criteria: that 20% of the inhabitants are dying of hunger, that 30% of the children are seriously malnourished and that two out of every 10,000 deaths per day are due to hunger. to malnutrition or total lack of food.

What situation is Gaza in now?

At this time and according to the CIF, 2.2 million Gazans, that is, the entire population, are already in phase 3 or crisis, “the highest percentage of people suffering from this type of acute food insecurity” than that classification. “has ever recorded.” 50% of the population is in an emergency situation (phase 4) and at least one in four households is in catastrophic conditions or famine.

The deputy executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), Carl Skau, warned at the end of February that it is necessary to act immediately to allow an increase in the volume of food reaching the north of the Strip, because “if nothing changes, the famine is imminent” in that area. In the south, humanitarian organizations are delivering food, but not enough or regularly. Skau mentioned “a real prospect of famine by May” in Gaza, but Máximo Torero, chief economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is even more pessimistic: “I believe that the speed and expansion of the conflict can lead to this happening faster,” he told this newspaper. The CIF will publish an updated report on Gaza in the middle of this month, which this expert believes will undoubtedly confirm the deterioration in food security and nutrition suffered in recent weeks.

Any chance of survival is being taken away from the population because they do not have access to food and water.

Máximo Torero, FAO

Why is the Gaza case unprecedented?

“Due to the speed at which this deterioration has occurred and because the entire population of Gaza is already hungry at this moment, it is in phase 3 of the classification,” says Torero.

According to the FAO expert, this situation is not recorded in other places affected by extreme hunger, where access to the population is possible. In Gaza, the problem is not only the war, which is increasingly widespread and intense, but “the serious damage to infrastructure and the impossibility of humanitarian aid arriving, in addition to the unprecedented displacement of the population and the destruction of services.” of water and sanitation,” he adds. “It is a totally anomalous situation that violates all rights to food. Any chance of survival is being taken away from the population because they do not have access to food and water,” says the FAO chief economist.

Were Gazans hungry before October 2023?

Gaza has been subject to an Israeli blockade since 2007, when the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas took power in the Strip. Nothing and no one enters or leaves this 365 square kilometer Palestinian territory without Israeli authorization. Between 53 and 59% of Gazans lived in poverty before this new onslaught of conflict began. On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants infiltrated Israel and killed around 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, according to official figures. Israel launched a military, air and land offensive against the Strip that lasts until today and has caused more than 30,000 deaths in Gaza, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Before October, two-thirds of Gaza’s population received help to eat, in the form of food or subsidies. Acute child malnutrition did not reach 1%.

How does this serious lack of food affect children?

Half of Gaza’s population is minors. Currently, 15% of children under two years of age suffer from acute malnutrition in northern Gaza, according to a joint study by Unicef ​​and the WFP (World Food Programme). All children under the age of five, or 335,000, are at risk of severe acute malnutrition, according to UN experts.

In February, a report by the Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC), an alliance of NGOs and UN entities led by Unicef, concluded that more than 90% of children under five years of age in Gaza are eating twice a day or less. Due to the scarcity of food, the fact that it is sometimes not in good condition and poor general hygiene conditions, these children are affected by infectious diseases, especially life-threatening diarrhea because their immune system is already weakened by the lack of food and water.

UN experts have noted that at the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, there are already 15 children who have died due to malnutrition. On Friday night, three more children died from the same cause in the Al Shifa hospital, also in the north, according to the spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health, Ashraf Al-Qidr, on Saturday. “When children start dying like this, we know that famine is there or just around the corner,” they warned. Other minors have died due to lack of food in other hospitals or shelters where they are overcrowded, but figures are difficult to obtain and verify.

A Palestinian woman, displaced in Rafah, in the south of the Strip, cooks in front of the tent in which they live, on March 6, 2024Mohammed Salem (REUTERS)

Is hunger a weapon of war?

Article 54 of the additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 says that “it is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless property essential for the survival of the civilian population, such as food items (…) whether to make to starve civilians, to cause their displacement, or for any other purpose.” United Nations Security Council Resolution 2417, adopted in 2018, condemns the use of hunger and starvation of the civilian population as a weapon of war.

In January, precautionary measures issued by the United Nations Court of Justice in The Hague required Israel to take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of basic services in Gaza, such as food assistance and clean water.

In recent months, several Israeli officials, such as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvirand the Minister of Energy, Israel Katzhave expressed their intention to deprive Gazan civilians of food and water.

UN experts have noted that at the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, there are already 15 children who have died due to malnutrition.

How does the international community act in the face of this immediate famine?

In recent days, information has multiplied about negotiations between Israel and Hamas sponsored by third countries for a 40-day ceasefire. Israel would let in trucks, tents, fuel and other materials to rehabilitate, for example, hospitals.

The United States, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and France have dropped food into Gaza from planes. Israel controls the airspace of the Strip and these initiatives, which for the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, “should be the solution of last resort,” must have its approval.

On Thursday, US President Joe Biden announced that Washington, together with other allied countries, will build a temporary port in Gaza for humanitarian aid access from Cyprus, the closest European Union country to the Strip (about 370 kilometers). ).

“You can’t bargain with humanitarian aid. It is a basic obligation of Israel and must be provided unconditionally,” the UN experts stressed.

The IV Geneva Convention establishes that the occupying powers, in this case Israel, have “the duty to supply food and medical products to the population of the occupied territory.”

What would happen if there was a ceasefire today?

“Going back is not going to be easy. This is going to take time. We should guarantee safe access for humanitarian aid and quickly plan logistics to get that assistance to places where people are dying of hunger, because we already saw what happened last week,” says Pires. The head of Unicef ​​refers to the death of more than a hundred Gazans when they were pursuing an aid convoy, some of them shot by Israeli soldiers, which he described as a “tragedy.”

“The priority is to stop the violence now and let in the humanitarian aid waiting at the border. First we have to solve the emergency, reduce the impact and then see how we rebuild and that is going to be long. But for now, the priority is the ceasefire to be able to enter massively with assistance. Time is crucial, we must act immediately,” says Torero.

The figures and reports presented by entities such as the FAO or Unicef ​​are prepared thanks to local staff, sporadic missions by representatives of these UN entities and information obtained via satellite. They are reliable, but “the balances we have now are much lower than the truth that will come when we can enter Gaza,” warns Pires.

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