One in two inhabitants in the Gaza Strip is experiencing a catastrophic food situation, specialized UN agencies warned on Monday.
Particularly in the north, where famine will rage by May in the absence of “urgent” measures.
In all, more than 1.1 million Gazans are facing “a situation of catastrophic hunger”, close to famine, “the highest number ever recorded” by the UN.
In the latest Integrated Food Security Classification Framework (IPC) report released in December, the World Food Program (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) considered famine to be " probable” by the end of May in the northern Gaza Strip.
These same organizations now estimate that it will occur “any time between now and May” if nothing is done to prevent it.
🆘 People in Gaza are starving to death.
According to a new report, the Gaza Strip is seeing the highest number of people ever recorded as facing catastrophic hunger.
For families in the north, #famine is imminent.
🔗Read more: https://t.co/OJ33Rr8mNt
— World Food Program (@WFP) March 18, 2024
“Without changes in access to humanitarian aid, famine is coming,” warns FAO Deputy Director General Berth Bechdol in an interview with AFP.
“It is possible that it is already rampant in the North, but we have still not been able to verify it”, due to lack of access to the territories concerned, she notes.
The IPC criteria for declaring a famine are not technically met but already “Gaza residents are dying of hunger,” warns WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain in a press release.
The WFP estimates that in the north of the territory, one in three children suffers from malnutrition and “acute malnutrition among children under five is increasing at a record rate”.
Now an “open-air cemetery”
In Gaza, “we are no longer on the verge of famine, we are facing a famine which affects thousands of people”, denounced the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell on Thursday in a speech to a European forum on aid humanitarian, speaking of the Palestinian enclave as an “open-air cemetery”.
However, “hundreds of trucks” carrying “months of stocks” of food and humanitarian aid wait in vain to enter the Gaza Strip, for lack of authorization by the Israeli authorities.
It is “unacceptable”, “starvation is used as a weapon of war”, he again denounced, as he had already done last week before the United Nations in New York.
The destruction is massive in the Gaza Strip and humanitarian aid is arriving in dribs and drabs.
According to the NGO Oxfam, 2,874 trucks entered the territory in February, or “only 20% of the daily aid” which entered before October 7.
There is still, according to the WFP, “a narrow window” to prevent famine.
For this, “we need immediate and unrestricted access to the north.
If we wait until famine is declared, it will be too late, thousands more people will have died,” according to Cindy McCain.
A rapid “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” would allow “enough food, medicine and drinking water to enter” the areas to avoid famine, adds Berth Bechdol, but a cessation of hostilities “does not seem likely in the days or weeks to come.
According to the WFP, to ensure basic food needs, "at least 300 trucks per day" would need to be brought into Gaza, particularly in the North, where it has only been able to transport nine aid convoys since the start of the war. 'year.
The last 18 trucks of food aid were delivered to Gaza City on Sunday evening.
To try to deliver more aid, food airdrops were carried out and the international community undertook to deliver food by sea. But this maritime humanitarian corridor opened from Cyprus does not change the situation, according to Berth Bechdol.