Every member of the United Nations Security Council except the United States has affirmed that the famine unfolding in Gaza is “man-made,” as the Gaza Health Ministry reported 10 more deaths from starvation in the past 24 hours.
On Wednesday, 14 of the 15 council members issued a joint statement calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire,” the release of hostages held by Hamas, and the lifting of Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries. The statement said: “Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately. Time is of the essence. The humanitarian emergency must be addressed without delay and Israel must reverse course.”
The joint statement expressed alarm at new findings from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which last week declared Phase 5 famine conditions in Gaza City and surrounding areas. “We express our profound alarm and distress at the IPC data on Gaza, published last Friday. It clearly and unequivocally confirms famine,” the 14 countries said. “We trust the IPC’s work and methodology. This is the first time famine has been officially confirmed in the Middle East region. Every day, more persons are dying as a result of malnutrition, many of them children.”
The statement concluded: “This is a man-made crisis. The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
Israel, which is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, has rejected the IPC findings. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs director general Eden Bar Tal called the report “deeply flawed, unprofessional, and gravely missing the standards expected from an international body entrusted with such a serious responsibility.”
The United States also dismissed the IPC’s conclusions. Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea told the council: “We can only solve problems with credibility and integrity. Unfortunately, the recent report from the IPC doesn’t pass the test on either.” She repeated the claim, disputed by the IPC, that “normal standards were changed for [the IPC famine] declaration.”
UN deputy humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya told the council that famine has been confirmed in north-central Gaza and is expected to spread south to Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September. “Over half a million people currently face starvation, destitution and death,” she said. “By the end of September, that number could exceed 640,000. Virtually no one in Gaza is untouched by hunger.”
She emphasized the crisis was deliberate. “This famine is not a product of drought or some form of natural disaster. It is a created catastrophe – the result of a conflict that has caused massive civilian death, injury, destruction and forced displacement.”
The Gaza Health Ministry reported on Wednesday that 10 more Palestinians, including two children, died “due to famine and malnutrition” in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of hunger-related deaths since the war began to 313, among them 119 children.
Save the Children chief executive Inger Ashing described what aid workers are seeing. “The Gaza famine is here. An engineered famine. A man-made famine,” she told the council. “Children in Gaza are systematically being starved to death. This is starvation as a method of war in its starkest terms.”
She said clinics are “packed with malnourished children” who “do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there emaciated, quite literally wasting away.” She described how children’s drawings have shifted from depictions of school and peace to “simple wishes for food, and increasingly, for death.”
“Once the total siege began in March, children would increasingly tell us they wish for food, for bread. These past few weeks, more and more children have shared that they wish to be dead,” Ashing said. One child wrote: “I wish I was in heaven where my mother is. In heaven, there is love, there is food and water.”
On the ground, Gaza’s hospitals reported continued casualties from Israeli attacks as the humanitarian crisis deepened. The Kuwait Specialty Hospital said a drone strike on tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis killed three, including a child and a woman, and wounded 21 others. Nasser Hospital reported at least six more killed in separate strikes.
Medical staff said Israeli strikes near aid distribution points run by the Israeli- and US-backed GHF killed at least 12 people, four of them while waiting for food parcels in northern Gaza.
Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said families are “running out of survival strategies.” He said, “Parents are relying on sporadic aid deliveries and skipping meals to make sure their children eat first,” and that deliveries remain “insufficient, disorganised and frequently looted by hungry crowds and armed gangs.”
According to Gaza health officials, Israeli forces killed 51 Palestinians on Wednesday alone. The ministry says Israel’s 691-day assault and siege has left at least 62,895 Palestinians dead. By comparison, 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, and more than 200 were taken captive.
Israeli forces continue to close in on Gaza City with tanks and warplanes, levelling residential blocks. On Tuesday, the military dropped evacuation orders on the as-Saftawi area and Jalaa Street. The following day, military spokesperson Avichay Adraee declared: “evacuation of Gaza City is inevitable.”
UN humanitarian officials warned that “failure to act now will have irreversible consequences.”
COMMENTS