UN famine report ‘very late’ as dire hunger spreads across Gaza
Dozens of Palestinians, especially children, are at risk of losing their lives due to the ongoing malnutrition and starvation that are imposed on them.
I have been standing here for months reporting how Palestinian parents are splitting breadcrumbs among the family, and have been talking about how there’s no fortified milk, and how parents and mothers are giving their children water instead of milk.
There have been a lot of stories we have been reporting, and the UN famine report has been very late, according to Palestinians. They have been witnessing weeks and months of this ongoing starvation.
I want to highlight the fact that there are a lot of claims online that there is food coming into Gaza, and there’s cheese and a lot of nutritious food coming in, but we need to know these are commercial trucks that Palestinians are unable to afford.
We’re talking about skyrocketing prices that displaced Palestinians are unable to meet. We’re talking about a whole population relying on distribution points by UN agencies and hot meal kitchens.
Israel ‘manipulating’ humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza for years
The famine in Gaza is unique, and nothing like it has been recorded in at least the past 20 years, according to a member of a high-level panel of experts of the UN food security programme.
Hilal Elver told Al Jazeera that the closest case is Sudan, where partial famine has been declared. However, “the people of Sudan can move from one place to another and escape, but there is no place to escape in Gaza, and the entire population is under serious siege that started in 2007.”
“Humanitarian aid is now manipulated by Israel,” said Istanbul-based Elver, who is also a former UN special rapporteur on the right to food.
She pointed out that the declaration of famine is a technical procedure and famine had gripped Gaza earlier but was not formally declared due to access constraints to collect information.
She also said Israel tried to prevent famine from being officially declared before the latest three-month reporting period of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) by allowing in a limited number of aid trucks, but it failed.
Israel had also been counting calories that it allowed into Gaza long before the start of the current war, infamously calling it the “Gaza diet”, Elver added.
“For instance, they did not allow in chocolate because they didn’t like that children would be happy to get it. That’s an amazingly calculated system that started in 2007.”
