Famine imminent in northern Gaza: report
ROME: Famine was imminent in the northern part of the Gaza Strip and the entire population there was facing crisis levels of food insecurity or worse, according to a report released on Monday.
In Gaza’s two northern governorates, where around 300,000 people remain trapped, famine was expected to arrive anytime between now and May, the new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report revealed.
The famine threshold for acute food insecurity had already been far exceeded, while acute malnutrition among children aged under five was proceeding at record pace toward a second famine threshold.
Non-trauma mortality — the final famine indicator — was accelerating too, but data remained limited, as was typical in war zones.
Overall, the new report showed that 1.1 million people in Gaza — half of the population — had completely exhausted their food supplies and coping capacities and were struggling with catastrophic hunger (IPC Phase 5) and starvation.
This was the highest number of people ever recorded as facing catastrophic hunger by the IPC system and double the number in IPC Phase 5 just three months ago.
UN World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain said: “People in Gaza are starving to death right now. The speed at which this man-made hunger and malnutrition crisis has ripped through
Gaza is terrifying.
“There is a very small window left to prevent an outright famine and to do that we need immediate and full access to the north. If we wait until famine has been declared, it’s too late. Thousands more will be dead.”
The report noted a steeply increasing trend in malnutrition across the Strip, where acute malnutrition stood at less than 1 percent before the escalation in fighting five months ago.
In the North Gaza governorate, the latest data indicated that one in three children below the age of two was now acutely malnourished or “wasted.” This meant they were dangerously thin for their height, which puts them at risk of death.
The southern governorates of Deir Al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, are classified in IPC phase 4 (emergency) and also risked slipping into famine conditions by July.
Throughout Gaza, 88 percent of the population faced emergency or worse food insecurity.
The report said that famine — even in northern Gaza — can be halted if full access was facilitated for aid organizations to provide food, water, nutrition products, medicines, health, and sanitation services, at scale, to the entire civilian population. For this to be possible, a humanitarian ceasefire was necessary.
World Food Programme officials estimate that simply addressing the basic food needs would require at least 300 trucks to enter Gaza every day and distribute food, especially in the north. The WFP has only managed to take nine convoys to the north since the start of the year.