Introduction
On 22 August, for the first time since 7 October 2023, the United Nations confirmed that a famine was underway in Gaza Governorate, classed under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) as Phase 5: Famine/Humanitarian Catastrophe. The famine was projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September. According to the mechanism’s report, “over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death.” A further 1.07 million people, 54 percent of the Gaza Strip’s population, faced Emergency (IPC Phase 4) levels of food insecurity, and another 396,000 people (20 percent) were experiencing a food security Crisis (IPC Phase 3).
[1]Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza in October 2023, several international relief and human rights organizations had issued pre-emptive warnings that Israel was using deliberate starvation as a weapon in its war on the Strip.[2] These warnings escalated in recent months, with reports from the ground confirming that famine was “imminent,” as a result of the accelerating collapse of the food security system.[3] By late July this year, the World Food Programme (WFP) was confirming that nearly a third of the Gaza Strip’s population was going days without food,[4] and that more than 500,000 people – about a quarter of the population – were facing “famine-like conditions, while the rest were suffering from emergency levels of hunger,”[5] due to Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid and its destruction of the Strip’s infrastructure.
[1] The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) is a global initiative involving UN agencies, regional partners, and relief organizations. It classifies food insecurity into five phases, the most severe of which is famine. See: “Li-ʾAwwal marra: taʾkīd ḥudūth al-majāʿa fī muḥāfaẓat Ghazza wa-tawaqquʿāt bi-imtidadihā ilā manāṭiq ʾukhrā khilāl asābīʿ,”
UN News, 22/8/2025, accessed 22/8/2025, at:
https://tinyurl.com/nhfv27rx.
[2] “Israel: Starvation Used as Weapon of War in Gaza,”
Human Rights Watch, 18/12/2023, accessed 7/8/2025, at:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/18/israel-starvation-used-weapon-war-gaza.
[3] “Gaza Strip: Famine is Imminent as 1.1 Million People, Half of Gaza, Experience Catastrophic Food Insecurity,”
Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 18/3/2024, accessed on 6/8/2025, at:
https://tinyurl.com/y4a435k8.
[4] Maia Davies, “Almost a Third of People in Gaza not Eating for days, UN Food Programme Warns,”
BBCNews, 25/7/2025, accessed on 13/8/2025, at:
https://tinyurl.com/2z333xxd.
[5] “Ghazza - wakālāt umamiyya tuḥadhdhir min anna muʾashshirāt al-ghidhāʾ tatajāwaz ʿatabāt al-majāʿa,”
UN News, 29/7/2025, accessed 14/8/2025, at:
https://tinyurl.com/48axa5es.
