Shame of Gaza as hunger becomes a death sentence
The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis confirms what humanitarian agencies have warned for months: famine has taken hold in Gaza.
More than half a million people are trapped in conditions marked by starvation, destitution, and preventable deaths.
By the end of September, over 640,000 people are projected to face catastrophic food insecurity, with more than a million others in emergency conditions.
This is not a distant prospect but a present reality, the first officially confirmed famine in the Middle East.
The grim statistics are not abstract. They represent children too weak to cry, babies born underweight or prematurely, and parents sacrificing their own meals so their children might eat. Malnutrition is accelerating at a terrifying pace: in July alone, 12,000 children were identified as acutely malnourished – the highest monthly figure ever recorded.
Pregnant women, older people, and those with disabilities are at particular risk, many unable to flee as conflict intensifies.
This crisis is not inevitable. It is the direct result of two years of relentless conflict, repeated displacement, and restrictions on humanitarian access. Gaza’s agricultural land lies decimated, markets have collapsed, and its health system is in ruins.
The United Nations and its agencies – FAO, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO – have been unequivocal: famine can and must be stopped, but only with immediate and unimpeded humanitarian access.
An urgent ceasefire is not simply a political demand; it is a moral imperative. Without it, trucks of food and medicine cannot move, hospitals cannot function, and aid workers cannot reach the starving.
The world cannot continue to watch as hunger becomes a weapon of war and children die of preventable causes.
What is required now is a surge of coordinated humanitarian assistance: food, clean water, medicines, fuel, and support to restore local food production.
Equally vital is the rehabilitation of Gaza’s shattered health system, already overwhelmed by disease outbreaks that turn otherwise treatable illnesses into death sentences.
“Hunger is not a privilege – it is a basic human right,” said FAO Director-General QU Dongyu. That right is being denied on a mass scale. Every day without action deepens the suffering and brings further unnecessary loss of life.
The international community must summon the will to act decisively – to demand a ceasefire, to secure safe humanitarian corridors, and to uphold the principle that no civilian, least of all a child, should starve in silence.