UN-Backed Food Security Group Declares Famine In Gaza for First Time
Humanitarian Crises 22/08/2025 •
Children line up for scarce food provided by a community kitchen in Khan Yunis, Gaza. In Gaza City, a few kilometers to the north, famine has been declared.

More than half a million people in Gaza City and its environs are now trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths, according to a new report by a UN-supported food security assessment body, released on Friday. Famine conditions are projected to spread from Gaza Governorate, in the northern area of the enclave, to Deir Al Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks in the absence of an aid surge.

By the end of September, more than 640,000 people will face catastrophic levels of food insecurity  across the Gaza Strip – according to the Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC),  labeling current conditions in the Gaza City governonate as an IPC-5 level of crisis, equivalent to famine, for the first time since the brutal war between Gaza’s governing Hamas group and Israel began in October, 2023.

By end September, an additional 1.14 million people in the 365 square meter enclave will be in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and a further 396,000 people in Crisis (IPC Phase 3) conditions, the IPC said, with the governorates of Deir al Balah and Khan Younis, further south also at risk of official famine.

Some 86% of Gaza is in Israeli militarized zones or under displacement orders as of August 20, 2025.

“Classifying famine means that the most extreme category is triggered when three critical thresholds – extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation-related deaths – have been breached. The latest analysis now affirms on the basis of reasonable evidence that these criteria have been met,” said the World Health Organization and three other UN agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF and the World Food Programme, in a joint press release.

The report came as Israel intensifies its attacks on Gaza City, with the stated aim of taking over the entire area in coming weeks and displacing hundreds of thousands of  inhabitants further south – in the absence of a cease-fire agreement with Hamas based on the return of all Israeli hostages and the organization’s disarmament.

UN agencies call for cease-fire

Two-year-old Yazan in the Shati Beach camp in Gaza. His mother: “We have not had flour or any food assistance for two months.”

In a statement issued following publication of the  IPC report, the WHO and its partners collectively called for a rapid surge in aid deliveries to the embattled Gaza Strip, given the escalating hunger-related deaths, rapidly worsening levels of acute malnutrition and plummeting levels of food consumption, with hundreds of thousands of people going days without anything to eat.

They also called for an “an immediate ceasefire and end to the conflict” to allow unimpeded, large-scale humanitarian response that would save lives.

The agencies said that they are also “gravely concerned” about the threat of an intensified military offensive in Gaza City and any escalation in the conflict, as it would have further devastating consequences for civilians where famine conditions already exist. “Many people – especially sick and malnourished children, older people and people with disabilities – may be unable to evacuate,” the agencies noted, with reference to Israeli military plans to force all of the city’s inhabitants further south.

“A ceasefire is an absolute and moral imperative now,” said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a statement.

“The world has waited too long, watching tragic and unnecessary deaths mount from this man-made famine. Widespread malnutrition means that even common and usually mild diseases like diarrhoea are becoming fatal, especially for children. The health system, run by hungry and exhausted health workers, cannot cope. Gaza must be urgently supplied with food and medicines to save lives and begin the process of reversing malnutrition. Hospitals must be protected so that they can continue treating patients. Aid blockages must end, and peace must be restored, so that healing can begin.”

Three conditions must be met for the IPC to determine that a famine is happening: at least one in five households facing an extreme food shortage; a certain proportion of children acutely malnourished; and at least two adults or four children out of every 10,000 people dying each day, either from outright starvation or a combination of disease and malnutrition.

In addition, the UN agencies said, Gaza’s health system has been decimated, safe drinking water and sanitation is inaccessible to many people, and approximately 98 percent of cropland in the territory is damaged or inaccessible – decimating the agriculture sector and local food production. Cash is critically scarce, aid operations remain severely disrupted, with most UN trucks looted amid growing desperation. Food prices are extremely high and there is not enough fuel and water to cook.

Israel rejects famine designation – says data was based on Hamas sources

Israel’s coordinating body for humanitarian aid in Gaza, COGAT, rejected the IPC findings, with COGAT head, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, saying that their report was “based on partial and unreliable sources, many of them affiliated with Hamas”.

In a series of statement posted on X, COGAT also said that experts had disregarded Israeli data on aid deliveries and overlooked Israel’s efforts over the last few weeks to bring more food into the territory, which it said had improved the situation.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry also charged that the IPC had changed one of its three criteria for declaring a famine, lowering the bar from a measure of 30% child malnutrition, as per IPC reviews of famine risks in Sudan, to a level of 15% malnutrition, for Gaza.

Malnutrition a critical reality with aid levels still insufficient

In a press briefing in Geneva on Friday, UN Relief Chief Tom Fletcher rejected Israel’s claims out of hand, saying, “Be in no doubt that this is irrefutable testimony. It is a famine, the Gaza famine. It is a famine that we could have prevented, if we had been allowed… It is a famine within a few hundred meters of food, within a fertile land.”

Regardless of exact proportions, malnutrition is a critical reality in Gaza today, according to UN and WHO data:

“Malnutrition among children in Gaza is accelerating at a catastrophic pace. In July alone, more than 12,000 children were identified as acutely malnourished – the highest monthly figure ever recorded and a six-fold increase since the start of the year. Nearly one in four of these children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), the deadliest form with both short and long-term impacts,” the joint UN statement said.

UN officials also have maintained that the recent uptick seen in food aid entries still falls far short of needs after two months of blockade in March-April, followed by only a partial reopening of aid corridors in May-July – along often-dangerous routes more susceptible to looting.

Flour spilled by trucks en route from the Kerem Shalom crossing to their destinations within Gaza is visible in satellite images from the last two weeks.

In addition, multi-drug resistant infections are surging and levels of morbidity – including diarrhoea, fever, acute respiratory and skin infections – are alarmingly high among children, whose immune response has been weakened by hunger.

“Famine is now a grim reality for children in Gaza Governorate, and a looming threat in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “As we have repeatedly warned, the signs were unmistakable: children with wasted bodies, too weak to cry or eat; babies dying from hunger and preventable disease; parents arriving at clinics with nothing left to feed their children. There is no time to lose. Without an immediate ceasefire and full humanitarian access, famine will spread, and more children will die. Children on the brink of starvation need the special therapeutic feeding that UNICEF provides.”

Image Credits: X/UNHCR, OCHA , UNICEF/UNI838255/El Baba, Ha'aretz/Planet Labs PBC.

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