Tracking a global famine: Exhibit A for the need for a cease-fire in Yemen, says the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative
In the coming months, the report said, as many as 1.1 million people could face the severest level of hunger classified by the group, with “alarmingly high acute malnutrition rates among children under 5, significant excess mortality and an imminent risk of starvation.”
“Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024,” said the report released Monday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative. The group — set up in 2004 by U.N. agencies and international relief groups — has classified a famine only twice before: in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017.
Since the attack on southern Israel, aid to Gaza has been reduced. Slowly, a few trucks of aid, airdropped packages and assistance delivered by sea have entered Gaza, but the need continues to far outweigh the relief actually reaching individuals in the territory.
The famine is determined “as an extreme lack of food in which starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident.” It is the international community’s primary mechanism to analyse data and determine whether famine is happening in a location or not.
The organization’s system of evidence-based analysis of hunger was launched two decades ago to track famine in Somalia. Since 2004, it has only classified a famine once in South Sudan.
The report makes it clear that this is a man made disaster and can be stopped. “Our findings are Exhibit A for the need for a cease-fire in Yemen,” the secretary general said.
Videos captured by media in recent weeks have shown people scrambling to get food on the rare occasions that aid trucks appear. convoys have erupted into chaotic scenes. Crowds rushed an aid convoy in Gaza City, killing more than 100 Palestinians. Israeli officials have acknowledged that soldiers fired on the crowd, but that others were killed or injured by trampling or being run over by trucks.
Aid agencies say the quickest way to avert hunger is for Israel to open more border crossings with Gaza and let more relief in. Israel does not limit humanitarian aid, but only one crossing into Gaza is open and Israeli inspects aid trucks for security reasons in Gaza.
“It really is heartbreaking to see the levels of desperation, hunger, of hopelessness across the entirety of the Strip,” Matthew Hollingworth, the Palestine director for the United Nations’ World Food Programme, told NPR in a voice memo. Mothers go to sleep because they still haven’t eaten. Parents are skipping meals day by day in order to make sure they have enough food for their children.
The Israeli military says it killed a Hamas man during a raid in the Gaza Strip. Hamas’ head of internal security was identified by Israeli authorities. The Government Media Office in Gaza said Mabhouh was in charge of the coordination between tribes and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to bring humanitarian aid into northern Gaza.
The World Food Programme Needs More Trucks for Food, Water and Medicine to End Hunger in Gaza – Arif Husain says he hopes to make a difference
To avoid famine, Gaza needs about 300 trucks every single day of food, water and medicine, says Arif Husain, the chief economist at the World Food Programme.
If we have it on a regular basis, it’s through all different border crossings, road and also by the sea. I think we can save many lives which are at risk right now, according to Husain.