starvation

More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades, new Oxfam analysis has found.  

A new Oxfam report reveals how Israel has been systematically weaponizing water against Palestinians in Gaza, showing disregard for human life and international law.  

Oxfam is gravely concerned for the lives of around 500,000 Palestinians, alongside any of the more than 200 Israeli and other national hostages, currently trapped in a “siege within a siege” in northern Gaza.  

In reaction to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report published today on Gaza stating that famine is imminent in Northern Gaza and, Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East and North Africa Regional Director, said: “This new report shows that the catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation in Gaza are the highest ever recorded. 

 Gaza farmers’ two-month-long “golden time” of agricultural production has been destroyed by Israel’s military bombing and sealing of northern Gaza, ruining the enclave’s richest farmlands which are one of its biggest sources of fruit and vegetables. 

The Israeli military onslaught in southern Gaza is causing destruction, danger, and civilian terror and suffering at such a scale that makes any humanitarian response impossible across the entire enclave, says Oxfam. The nightmare is unfolding in full view of the international community. “Our political leaders are failing – in abject weakness – to forge a ceasefire, which is the only possible humanitarian action that now really matters,” said Marta Valdes Garcia, Oxfam Humanitarian Director.

A year and a half since the Covid-19 pandemic began, deaths from hunger are outpacing the virus. The worst is still yet to come unless governments urgently tackle food insecurity and its root causes head on. We need action to create fairer, more resilient and sustainable ways of feeding the world.

We are seriously concerned that a lack of food may peak in May and June reaching emergency levels in South Sudan.

In 1984, a famine claimed the lives of one million Ethiopians.