On 9July 2024 UN experts declared famine has spread throughout Gaza strip

 

A malnourished Palestinian baby is held while receiving treatment at the International Medical Corps field hospital, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the southern Gaza Strip, June 22, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

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UN experts declare famine has spread throughout Gaza strip

09 July 2024

GENEVA (9 July 2024) – The recent deaths of more Palestinian children due to hunger and malnutrition leaves no doubt that famine has spread across the entire Gaza strip, a group of independent experts* said today.

“Fayez Ataya, who was barely six months old, died on 30 May 2024 and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi died on 1 June 2024 at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah. Nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on 3 June 2024 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Al-Mawasi, Khan Younis. All three children died from malnutrition and lack of access to adequate healthcare,” the experts said.

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza.”

The experts said the death of a child from malnutrition and dehydration indicates that health and social structures have been attacked and are critically weakened. “When the first child dies from malnutrition and dehydration, it becomes irrefutable that famine has taken hold,” the experts said.

“We declare that Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza. We call upon the international community to prioritise the delivery of humanitarian aid by land by any means necessary, end Israel’s siege, and establish a ceasefire.” [my yellow highlighting]

“When a 2-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on 24 February and 4 March respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza. The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths,” the experts said. “Thirty-four Palestinians have died from malnutrition since 7 October, the majority being children. Inaction is complicity.”

The experts: Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the right to food; Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Tlaleng Mofokeng, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967; Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Paula Gaviria Betancur, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons; George Katrougalos, Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order; Barbara G. Reynolds (Chair), Bina D’Costa, Dominique Day and Catherine Namakula, Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent

Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts and Working Groups are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Comprising the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, Special Procedures is the general name of the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

Video Portrait of a War Crime 2024: a situation that the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia is assiduously averting its eyes from even as it ignores its binding responsibilities under international law and conventions

As of 23 March 2024 at least 32,142 Palestinian men women and children had been killed and more than 74,412 had been wounded in Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza quoted in mainstream media.

On 18 March 2024 the World Health Organisation stated:

The latest analysis from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership released today warns that the situation in Gaza is catastrophic, with northern Gaza facing imminent famine and the rest of the Strip at risk as well.

"The IPC announcement reflects the dire situation that the people of Gaza are facing," said WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. "Before this crisis, there was enough food in Gaza to feed the population. Malnutrition was a rare occurrence. Now, people are dying, and many more are sick. Over a million people are expected to face catastrophic hunger unless significantly more food is allowed to enter Gaza."

Before the recent months’ hostilities, 0.8% of children under 5 years of age were acutely malnourished. Today’s report shows that as of February in the northern governorates, that figure is between 12.4 and 16.5%.

Without a significant and immediate increase in deliveries of food, water and other essential supplies, conditions will continue deteriorating. Virtually all households are already skipping meals every day and adults are reducing their meals so that children can eat. 

UN News stated on 20 March 2024:

“Facilitated missions primarily involved food distributions, nutrition and health assessments, and the delivery of supplies to hospitals,” OCHA said, repeating warnings that “humanitarian access constraints” continue to “severely affect the timely delivery of life-saving assistance, particularly to hundreds of thousands of people in northern Gaza”.

Echoing those calls on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged the Israeli authorities “to ensure complete and unfettered access for humanitarian goods throughout Gaza and for the international community to fully support our humanitarian efforts”. 

In January 2024 mainstream media began to report that Israeli citizens were blockading humanitarian aid trucks at official checkpoints for transit from Egypt into the Gaza Strip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqRzfb2oMaM 

22 Mar 2024 #TheGrayzone

Journalist Jeremy Loffredo goes inside the grassroots Israeli campaign to block desperately needed aid to the besieged Gaza Strip and elicits the shockingly candid views of the Jewish Israeli nationalists manning the barricades.

Setting out on a bus caravan through illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Loffredo arrives at the Kerem Shalom crossing to Gaza, filming Israeli citizens as they physically block trucks loaded with flour and other essential goods. There, a reservist who served in the military assault on Gaza confesses to an array of war crimes, including blowing up the offices of UN centers dedicated to providing food to the local population.

Loffredo then joins nationalists on a march toward Gaza, where they hope to establish new settlements after the population is violently driven out.

This original Grayzone report was produced thanks to viewers like you.

Find more reporting at https://thegrayzone.com

Cartoons of the Week

John Shakespeare

 

Cathy Wilcox

Food crises will affect tens of millions of people across the world this year, researchers warn

Reuters, 2 April 2019:

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Food crises will affect tens of millions of people across the world this year, researchers warned on Tuesday, after war, extreme weather and economic woes in 2018 left more than 113 million in dire need of help.

Conflict and insecurity were responsible for the desperate situation faced by 74 million people, or two-thirds of those affected, in 2018, said the Global Network against Food Crises in its annual report.

The Network’s members include the United Nations’ Food aand Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme, and the European Union.

Analyzing 53 countries, it uses a five-phase scale with the third level classified as crisis, fourth as emergency and fifth as famine/catastrophe.

Luca Russo, FAO’s senior food crises analyst, warned that millions more are now at risk of reaching level three and above.

“The 113 million is what we call the tip of the iceberg. If you look at the numbers further down, you have people who are not food insecure but they are on the verge,” Russo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

These people, a further 143 million, are “so fragile that it just takes a bit of a drought” for them to fall into food crisis, he said.

“Unless we work substantially on these people and remove some of the drivers that can bring them to a worse situation, the overall numbers are likely to increase,” Russo added.

Of countries that suffered food crises in 2018, the worst affected was Yemen, where nearly 16 million people needed urgent food aid after four years of war, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo at 13 million and Afghanistan at 10.6 million.....

Put a hand in your pocket for the Horn of Africa

No glib comment is needed as a reminder that famine is always with us somewhere in the world. This time it is the Horn Of Africa and Somalia in particular which is bearing the brunt of widespread drought and crop failure.

So come on Aussies, put a hand in your pocket and send a donation to the Australian fundraising arm of the United Nations Refugee Agency, Australia for UNHCR and the East Africa Emergency Appeal online by credit card or call 1300 440 433 or 1300 361 288 (within Australia) to find out how/where to send cheques or money orders.

“All donations in response to this appeal will go directly towards UNHCR's emergency relief operations in East Africa, providing much-needed essentials like food, clean water, shelter, sanitation, survival kits and emergency feeding and nutrition programs.

90 cents in every dollar donated will go directly to the field to help people in need in East Africa.”

Photographs of famine victims found at Google Images