Featured Image Credit: Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images
Topics: News, World News, Palestine, Israel, Politics
Rhianna Benson
Topics: News, World News, Palestine, Israel, Politics
For the first time since Israel launched its war on Palestinians living in Gaza, a famine has been declared by officials.
The news comes after the closure of United Nations food distribution centres, as well as the bombing of local bakeries in the area, and a restriction on humanitarian aid.
Over 271 Palestinians - 121 of whom were children - are recorded to have died from hunger since the war broke out, as per Metro.
According to a warning made by Philippe Lazzarini - commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees - earlier this year, Israel has used hunger as a war weapon in Gaza for some time.
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Today (22 Aug), however, a famine in the area has now been officially confirmed by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
The system classifies food insecurity and malnutrition levels using a set of criteria to determine whether or not a certain crisis should now be considered a famine.
This criteria includes at least 20 per cent of households facing an extreme lack of food, or at least 30 per cent of children suffering acute malnutrition, as well as two people of every 10,000 people dying each day of 'outright starvation'.
According to The Guardian, in July, the IPC had warned that a 'famine scenario' was beginning in parts of Gaza, but they didn't make a formal declaration due to a lack of hard data.
Co-CEO of ActionAid UK, Taahra Ghazi, has since spoken out on the IPC's ruling.
"That famine should be officially confirmed in Gaza for the first time by the IPC despite months of repeated warnings, and despite it being entirely preventable, is a deep stain on our collective humanity," she said.
Ghazi also went on to say that this 'engineered famine' is 'the direct result of the Israeli authorities’ deliberate blocking of food, water and other humanitarian aid into Gaza'.
She continued: "It is utterly shameful that, for so many months, the Israeli authorities have used starvation as a weapon of war with impunity: now we are seeing the calamitous consequences play out.
"Malnourished mothers are unable to breastfeed their babies; our own staff and partners are dizzy and exhausted because they give any food they can find to their children and go hungry themselves."
UN emergency coordinator Tom Fletcher has also spoken out since the IPC's ruling, claiming the official report should be read 'in sorrow and in anger'.
According to Sky News, Fletcher continued: "It is a famine. The Gaza famine. It is a famine we could have prevented.
"It is a famine that hits the most vulnerable first - each with a name and each with a story."
The coordinator added that this state of hunger 'forces people to risk their lives to seek food', adding: "It is a famine we repeatedly warned of."
Like Ghazi, Fletcher agreed that the famine is 'openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war'.
"Everyone owns this," he continued. "The Gaza famine is the world's famine.
"It is a famine that will and must haunt us all. It is a predictable and preventable famine."
Fletcher has since issued Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with calls for an 'immediate ceasefire', as well as for aid crossings to now be opened.