Gaza: Famine “irrefutably” confirmed, UN humanitarians unite in plea for aid access – OCHA, OHCHR, WFP and WHO

22 August 2025

Famine has been confirmed in Gaza Governorate by the world’s top authority on food security and will spread further within the Strip unless fighting stops and much more aid is allowed in, UN humanitarians said on Friday.

“This is irrefutable testimony… It is a famine, the Gaza famine,” UN relief chief Tom Fletcher told reporters in Geneva just as the report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a 21-agency partnership which includes UN entities and non-governmental organizations, was released.

More than half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic hunger conditions while more than a million more are in a food emergency phase, the report states.

This man-made catastrophic famine could have been prevented by a steady flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave, Mr. Fletcher pointed out.

“Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel,” he said. “It is a famine within a few 100 meters of food in a fertile land.”

The UN’s top aid official underscored that the famine in Gaza is “caused by cruelty, justified by revenge, enabled by indifference and sustained by complicity”.

The situation “must spur the world to more urgent action, must shame the world to do better,” he said.

Mr. Fletcher joined a chorus of voices reacting to the IPC report, including that of UN chief António Guterres, who in a statement on Friday called for urgent measures in response to “a man-made disaster”, including “an immediate ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages and full, unfettered humanitarian access”.

Jean-Martin Bauer, Director of Food Security and Nutrition Analysis for the UN World Food Programme (WFP), stressed that this was the first time that a famine has been confirmed in the Middle East.

Speaking from Rome, Mr. Bauer explained that the IPC classification of famine “only happens when three thresholds are met: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation related deaths”.

“All three have now been breached in Gaza City,” he said.

The WFP official added that these conditions are forecast to spread to Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September, unless aid can be brought in quickly at great scale.

In response to Israeli criticism aimed at undermining the report’s methodology, Mr. Bauer said that the IPC is the “gold standard in food security analysis worldwide”, and clarified that the same indicators have been used, and been widely accepted, in the IPC’s past determinations of famine in Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.

He also stressed that for the first time since the creation of the IPC twenty years ago, two famines are taking place at the same time: Sudan (since 2024) and now Gaza.

Both Mr. Bauer and Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territory, underscored the disastrous health consequences of the current crisis, and notably an “exponential” increase in child malnutrition and acute malnutrition.

Dr. Peeperkorn said that in July alone more than 12,000 children were identified as acutely malnourished – the highest monthly figure ever recorded and a six-fold increase since the start of the year.

In 2025 alone, 206 people have died due to the effects of malnutrition, as verified by WHO, he said.

“Teams, including myself, witnessed people starving,” he said, describing five-year-old children who looked like two-year-olds, and health workers “weak and exhausted”.

The WHO official pointed out malnutrition’s detrimental impact on the immune system, increasing the body’s vulnerability to infectious and other diseases, and making it harder to recover from trauma injuries extremely prevalent in the war-torn Strip.

“This is the human face of a collapsing health, nutrition, water and sanitation system,” he stressed.

“Hunger and malnutrition are not only about empty stomachs,” he said. “It weakens bodies, fuels, disease, cripples health systems and robs children of their future.”

With the declaration of famine in Gaza Governorate, a “nightmare scenario” has become reality, said a spokesperson for UN Human Rights (OHCHR), Jeremy Laurence.

The famine is the “direct result of actions taken by the Israeli Government,” he said. The Israeli military have “destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, almost all agricultural land, banned fishing and forcibly displaced the population – all drivers of this famine,” he said, in addition to restricting and blocking aid.

“It is a war crime to use starvation as a method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of willful killing,” he said.

All the speakers insisted that urgent steps must be taken to reverse the escalating hunger crisis.

Humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher reiterated his call for a ceasefire to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu “and anyone who can reach him”.

“Open the [border] crossings north and south, all of them,” he said, pleading for humanitarian access to the Strip. “Let us get food and other supplies in unimpeded and at the massive scale required. End the retribution.”

The UN official said that it was “too late for far too many, but not for everyone” in the war-torn enclave.

“For humanity’s sake, let us in,” he implored.

Read more about this topic:

• UN Secretary-General – on famine in Gaza
• Famine confirmed for first time in Gaza – Joint Press Release by FAO, UNICEF, WHO, and WFP
• UN Relief Chief says Gaza famine “must spur the world to urgent action”
• UNRWA Commissioner-General on Gaza: Famine is now confirmed in Gaza City
• WFP: As famine grips Gaza, families turn to desperate measures to survive
• UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory on famine in Gaza
• UN Human Rights Chief says Gaza Governorate famine is direct result of Israeli Government actions