Why doesn’t the UN make a formal declaration of famine in Gaza despite the facts?

Various humanitarian organizations United Nations, as UNICEF, the World Food Program or its Humanitarian Coordination Office, began to warn weeks ago that the population of Loop was suffering from hunger and was rapidly heading towards a situation of famine, despite which this condition has not yet been formally declared.

The most obvious and alarming sign was the confirmation that at least 25 young children have recently died from malnutrition and dehydration, a condition that threatens all of the 335,000 children in the Palestinian enclave.

Meanwhile, the UN Humanitarian Coordination Office confirms that reports of children dying or threatened with death from acute malnutrition increase every day, a situation that is more serious in northern Gaza, where the entry of food aid is completely blocked. for Israel.

The question then arises: What is the UN waiting for to declare famine?

Famine: a technical definition

The indicators to take into account are almost all already gathered, but the limited humanitarian access to Gaza makes it very difficult to collect the latest data necessary to meet the technical definition of famine according to an international mechanism called “Integrated Classification of Food Safety Phases.”

This classification consists of five levels ranging from 1 to 5, the latter corresponding to a famine, according to a very conservative methodology to avoid overestimating a hunger problem.

To reach level 5, three main criteria must be met: that the twenty% of the population of a given area is deprived of food, one in three children is severely malnourished and two in every 10,000 inhabitants die every day due to hunger or malnutrition combined with a disease, usually infectious.

From theory to reality

The UN rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, has consulted with experts on this issue and has indicated that there is a general consensus that the first two criteria are widely met in Gaza.

Instead, “The last criterion is very difficult to measure, but according to what is being seen, we think that it is most likely that it is also happening.”

Agreeing with warnings from several UN humanitarian spokesmen, Fakhri stressed that famine is almost certainly already a reality in Gaza, since history shows that official statements often arrive late.

This occurred in 2011, when a famine was declared in Somalia that already affected half a million people in Somalia, of whom it is estimated that they died around the 10%.

Something similar happened in 2017 in South Sudan, where an intense armed conflict decimated all the livelihoods of some five million people in areas of the center and north of the country in less than three years.

Land access versus sea route

As a clear recognition that a critical point has been reached in Gaza, a joint mission of the Spanish NGOs Open Arms and World Central Kitchen (WCK) left Cyprus today in what represents the opening of the first humanitarian maritime corridor towards the enclave. to alleviate the consequences of the little aid that Israel allows to enter by land.

However, the spokesperson for the UN Humanitarian Coordination Office, Jens Laerke, insisted today in Geneva that “There is no substitute for the entry of food and other humanitarian supplies by land, particularly in northern Gaza”

“Let’s not make a mistake. Of course it is welcome (the ship carrying aid), but what we need is land access and a safe and regular supply within Gaza,” he added.

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