The IPC calls for immediate action to end the siege and allow for unimpeded access to humanitarian aid
‘Worst-case Scenario of Famine Unfolding
in Gaza,’ Declares Global Hunger Monitor
Sondos Asem / Middle East Eye
(July 29, 2025) — The world’s leading hunger monitoring system on Tuesday issued a warning that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding in Gaza due to the Israel-imposed starvation and siege.
“Latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City,” the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in a new report.
“Amid relentless conflict, mass displacement, severely restricted humanitarian access, and the collapse of essential services, including healthcare, the crisis has reached an alarming and deadly turning point.”
The warning comes as nearly 150 Palestinian children and adults in Gaza have succumbed to death from starvation since Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in October 2023.
The blockade on the Palestinian enclave has fluctuated in intensity, but since 2 March, Israel has prevented all food and aid from reaching starving Palestinians.
Local health officials said on Monday that 40,000 infants are at risk of imminent death.
“Malnutrition has been rising rapidly in the first half of July,” the IPC said.
“Over 20,000 children have been admitted for treatment for acute malnutrition between April and mid-July, with more than 3,000 severely malnourished. Hospitals have reported a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths of children under five years of age, with at least 16 reported deaths since 17 July.”
The IPC called for immediate action to end the siege and allow for unimpeded access to humanitarian aid.
Unrwa, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees and its largest humanitarian provider in Gaza, has told MEE that it has had 6,000 aid trucks in Egypt and Jordan for over four and a half months awaiting Israeli permits to enter Gaza.
The IPC’s latest analysis in May projected that by September Gaza’s entire 2.1 million population would face acute food insecurity and more than 500,000 people would reach a state of extreme starvation.
Starvation as a Weapon of War
The IPC’s report is a warning rather than a formal declaration of famine.
According to the monitor’s classification system, there are five phases of acute food insecurity. The worst is Phase 5, where a catastrophic level of hunger is detected among households.
In that phase, the IPC relies on three metrics: 20 percent of households in an area suffer an extreme lack of food resulting in critical levels of acute malnutrition and death, acute malnutrition among children under five reaches 30 percent, and at least two deaths per 10,000 people per day are recorded.
“Gaza is now on the brink of a full-scale famine. People are starving not because food is unavailable, but because access is blocked, local agrifood systems have collapsed, and families can no longer sustain even the most basic livelihoods,” said the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation Director-General QU Dongyu:
“We urgently need safe and sustained humanitarian access and immediate support to restore local food production and livelihoods – this is the only way to prevent further loss of life. The right to food is a basic human right.”
Reacting to the IPC’s report, Cindy McCain, WFP Executive Director, said: “The unbearable suffering of the people of Gaza is already clear for the world to see. Waiting for official confirmation of famine to provide life-saving food aid they desperately need is unconscionable.
“We need to flood Gaza with large-scale food aid, immediately and without obstruction, and keep it flowing each and every day to prevent mass starvation. People are already dying of malnutrition and the longer we wait to act, the higher the death toll will rise.”
The international community has stepped up pressure on Israel to end its deadly siege on Gaza, in place since 2 March, to avert imminent famine.
There is no starvation in Gaza.”— Israeli PM Netanyahu.
Last week, more than 100 international human rights and humanitarian organisations called for an end to the siege, citing widespread starvation affecting their staff.
Unrwa communications director Juliette Touma also told MEE last week that several of the organisation’s staff fainted on duty due to malnutrition.
Journalists are also affected. Last week, the AFP journalists’ union warned that its members working in Gaza are facing death from starvation as a result of Israel’s blockade. Along with the BBC, Reuters and AP, the agency also issued a statement highlighting the plight of its journalists.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity and war crimes, mainly related to the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice, the UN’s principal judicial organ, has issued multiple interim decisions over the past year ordering Israel, among other emergency measures, to ensure the unimpeded access to humanitarian aid in Gaza or risk breaching the Genocide Convention. Israel has largely ignored the orders.
