Hunger: War’s silent killer
Aid groups fighting uphill battle to feed millions suffering in conflict zones
Dr. John Kahler has seen hunger up close, all around the world.
He treated it in Haiti. He battled starvation in Yemen and Syria. He cared for undernourished patients from Myanmar and Venezuela.
But none of those crises compare to what’s unfolding right now in the Gaza Strip.
“This is the worst I’ve ever seen anywhere, pure and simple,” Kahler, a pediatrician and co-founder of MedGlobal, a U.S.-based humanitarian group, told the Star on Friday from Rafah, at the southern edge of the Palestinian territory where borders can only be crossed with special permissions or for an exorbitant price.
“The kicker to this, as opposed to everywhere else I’ve been, is that there’s no place to go.”
War has many byproducts, death and displacement being the most obvious and immediate. However, the silent killer common to the worst of the world’s conflicts is the gnawing pain in an underfed belly, the absence of food and essential nutrients whose effects are particularly pronounced for children, infants and pregnant women.
In the past week, officials have issued grave warnings about escalating risks from hunger in Gaza — where at least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration — but also in Sudan, which has been ravaged by a civil war that, according to the World Food Program, could become “the world’s largest hunger crisis” unless immediate steps are taken to stop fighting and deliver aid.
And the threat of hunger-related illness and death is rising once again in Haiti, after armed gangs seized control of the country’s main airport and seaport, putting at risk food and aid shipments, but also preventing interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry from returning to the island nation.
It’s a violation of the Geneva Conventions, but restricting food has served as a powerful tactic employed throughout recorded history by combatants seeking an upper hand on the enemy. In other wars, hunger has been the simple, tragic consequence of conflict.
Demand outstrips supply
Critics, including Human Rights Watch, accuse Israel of deliberately depriving Palestinians in Gaza of food.
In response to the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which killed some 1,200 Israelis and saw another 250 others taken hostage, Israel cut off clean water and electricity supplies to Gaza and blocked ship- ments of food, medicine and other goods.
Israel has repeatedly denied allegations that it is starving Gazans, saying that it lets aid shipments into the territory and acts in compliance with international humanitarian law. Still, while limited shipments have since been allowed in, demand far outstrips the supply. A report this month noted that food prices had risen, on average, by 105 per cent since the war began.
When UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram was in Gaza in January, a 25-kilogram bag of flour that normally would cost 70 shekels ($26) was being sold in Rafah, in the south, for 150 shekels ($56). In northern Gaza, which is under total control of the Israeli military and receiving fewer food and aid shipments, Ingram said such a bag was going for 700 shekels ($263).
“I’ve seen reports now that are talking about 2,000 shekels ($750) in the north,” she told the Star.
To quell their hunger, some residents of northern Gaza have reportedly turned to animal feed stocks. A UN official said this month that some had even resorted to baking bread using flour and weeds, according to Al-Shorouk, an Egyptian newspaper.
Of the more than 30,000 Palestinians who have died since the start of the conflict, some of the most recent deaths are from malnutrition and starvation, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Euro-Med, a human rights group, said Friday that its staff in northern Gaza had witnessed the deaths of three people on Wednesday evening from some combination of hunger, dehydration, or malnutrition: a 72-year-old, a 15-year-old and a three-year-old boy, Ahmed Wael Ahl.
South Africa, which brought a complaint before the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention, wrote this week in a submission to the court that Palestinian children were “starving to death as a direct result of the deliberate acts and omissions of Israel.”
Millions suffer in Sudan
Sudan’s civil war, which began last April with fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force, has displaced more than eight million people, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.
The biggest challenge for aid groups trying to help the more than six million Sudanese who have been displaced within the country is getting access to ports and border crossings, says Leni Kinzli, the World Food Program’s spokesperson for Sudan.
The Sudanese government agreed to change course only recently after blocking most aid shipments to the country, fearing they could be used to deliver arms and supplies to rebel forces. The move comes ahead of the rainy season, when transport of food aid can become difficult, if not impossible.
“We don’t know when, but we know that if we are not able to deliver assistance that people will start to starve to death on a massive scale,” Kinzli said. “We’re already hearing anecdotal reports of people starving to death in some of the camps (for displaced people) in Darfur, for example, and other anecdotal reports from Khartoum.”
Sudan’s civil war is also placing an impossible strain on neighbouring countries such as Chad, which is hosting some 560,000 Sudanese refugees while dealing with its own food shortages due to drought. The World Food Program needs $240 million to see its operations through the next six months.
“There is no problem with access,” says Pierre Honnorat, the WFP’s country director for Chad. “It’s a problem of financial resources. We don’t have money. If tomorrow we had money all the trucks would go out, all the aid would leave and we could reach all these people, whether it be the Chadians who are living through this terrible drought or the refugees that are here.”
‘We’re letting a country sink’
Haiti has long struggled with poverty and hunger. The problem was already projected to get worse in the months ahead due to the political instability and the power of armed gangs who have free rein over much of the country.
But at a time when the country is most in need, it is also struggling with global indifference.
“There are too many crises and not enough interest, and the arguments have not been made strongly enough for Haiti,” says Martine Villeneuve, country director in Haiti for Action Against Hunger, an international aid group.
She said some 300,000 people have been displaced due to the violence, both in the capital Port-au-Prince and in Artibonite, Haiti’s main rice-growing region, where some farmers have abandoned their crops for fear of being kidnapped for ransom.
In the capital, gangs took control last week of the seaport and its 6,000 containers. An estimated 190 of those containers hold humanitarian assistance — food, medicine and other essential items.
The gangs are opposed to Henry, who has refused to call elections after assuming power following the 2021 assassination of Jovenel Moïse. Unable to return to Haiti this week following international travel, Henry’s plane was reportedly forced to land in Puerto Rico, where he remains.
The gangs may be trying to starve Port-au-Prince, Villeneuve said, as that “puts strong pressure on people to take political decisions (that) will necessarily include a dialogue with the gangs.”
In total, more than seven million Haitians are considered food-insufficient; one child in four there is suffering severe malnutrition.
“We are letting a country sink because in real numbers it doesn’t represent something comparable to the situation in Gaza; because it doesn’t have the same impact on European security as the crisis in (Ukraine); because we have a crisis in Sudan that emerged in 2023,” Villeneuve said.
Plans to create port in Gaza
In Gaza, concerned countries have taken to equipping pallets of food with parachutes and dropping them from the air — an imperfect and grossly inadequate solution to the problem of chronic hunger, which can bring with it serious medical complications.
In Thursday’s state of the union address, U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to create a port in Gaza that would “enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”
Aid groups and intervening governments working to save lives around the world from the ravages of hunger say there are easier solutions at hand, however.
In Sudan, they’re calling for a commitment from the two parties to a Ramadan ceasefire to prevent the looming catastrophe. In Haiti, the government and opposition will need to strike a deal to hold elections, in the hope that a freely and fairly elected government will be able to tame the violence.
And in Gaza, a reprieve from hunger is as close and as far away as a deal to release the remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for a ceasefire — an agreement that both Israel and Hamas accuse the other of blocking.
In the meantime, desperate Palestinian civilians and those trying to keep them alive endure a sort of torment.
“I can see (the food) on the other side of the Egyptian border, so it’s not like it doesn’t exist,” said Kahler. “I can throw a rock and hit it. I’m not sure why else it would not be here, unless it was being purposefully denied.”
This is the worst I’ve ever seen anywhere, pure and simple. The kicker to this, as opposed to everywhere else I’ve been, is that there’s no place to go.
DR. JOHN KAHLER ON THE
S I T U AT I O N IN GAZA