World reacts as UN-backed body declares famine in Gaza

The UN-backed IPC says more than half a million Palestinians facing catastrophic famine conditions amid Israel’s war.

Gaza City and surrounding areas are officially suffering from famine, and it will likely spread across the enclave, a United Nations-backed global hunger monitor has said.

On Friday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system said 514,000 people, close to a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza, are experiencing famine, with the number due to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.

This comes after 22 months of war, during which Israeli forces have destroyed infrastructure and bakeries, blocked the entry of aid into the besieged Strip, and targeted and killed desperate Palestinians seeking food.

This is the first time the IPC has recorded famine outside of Africa, and the global group has predicted that famine conditions would spread to the central and southern areas of Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of next month.

Here’s how global leaders and NGOs are reacting to the IPC report:

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Gaza’s famine was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”.

“Famine is not only about food; it is the deliberate collapse of the systems needed for human survival,” Guterres said. “People are starving. Children are dying. And those with the duty to act are failing.”

The UN chief said Israel, as the occupying power, has “unequivocal obligations” under international law, including the duty to ensure that food and medical supplies are made available to the population of Gaza.

UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said the famine has been “openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war” and called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “end the retribution” and open Gaza’s crossings for unrestricted access.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the UN-backed declaration that famine was present in parts of Gaza.

“The IPC report is an outright lie,” Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office.

United Nations

He added that “Israel does not have a policy of starvation”, citing the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip during the war.

The controversial Israel- and US-backed GHF took over all food aid distribution in Gaza from the UN in May. Since then, Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 2,000 aid seekers have been killed.

The group went on to say that the declaration by the UN has confirmed the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and accused Israel of using starvation as a “tool of war”.

Gaza’s Government Media Office says the IPC report and comments from UN officials confirm that famine in Gaza is now “a proven fact” that may amount to war crimes.

The reality in Gaza is even more grave and catastrophic than depicted in the UN-backed report, the office said in a statement, calling on the international community to intervene.

It said Israel’s own data on allowing several dozen trucks of aid into Gaza on average during the past weeks show that the volume going in is much lower than what’s needed by the famine-stricken population in the enclave. The figures “incriminate, not exonerate” Israeli authorities, the office added.

The statement said the technical terms used in the IPC report indicate that famine is now “a fact that cannot be manipulated” by Israel or its allies, and that “any state or organisation that turns a blind eye to this crime becomes complicit in its continuation and falls under the scope of international law”.

The Foreign Ministry of the PA, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank not under Israeli control, said the IPC report “closed the door to interpretation and speculation regarding the occurrence of famine”.

“It has confirmed that what is required now, before it is too late, is the mobilisation of international influence in all its forms and dimensions to immediately halt the famine and the aggression against our people,” it said in a statement on social media.

It also urged the UN Security Council and the international community “to address with utmost seriousness and concern” the contents of the report.

“This signifies that the Israeli occupation is proceeding to destroy all aspects and components of human life in the Gaza Strip and committing the crime of using starvation as a weapon in the war against Palestinian civilians.”