Israel Famine declared in an area of the Gaza Strip
A famine has been declared in a northern area of the Gaza Strip. The IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) initiative responsible has announced that the necessary criteria have been met.
22.08.2025, 11:52
SDA
This concerns the administrative district of Gaza, which includes the city of Gaza. According to the initiative, the lives of 132,000 children under the age of five are at risk due to malnutrition. 41,000 of these are considered particularly serious cases, twice as many as in the previous assessment in May. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), this is the first time a famine has been declared in a Middle Eastern country.
"An immediate ceasefire and an end to the conflict are crucial to allow unhindered, large-scale humanitarian assistance to save lives," the initiative said.
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the other hand, stated after the IPC publication: "There is no famine in Gaza."
Strict criteria for declaring famine
Three criteria must be met before a famine can be declared: At least 20 percent of households are affected by an extreme food shortage, at least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition and at least two adults or four children per 10,000 inhabitants die every day from hunger or due to the combination of malnutrition and disease. All three are true, as Jean-Martin Bauer of the World Food Program (WFP) said in a briefing for journalists in Geneva.
The IPC initiative was founded in 2004. Its members are almost two dozen United Nations organizations and aid agencies. It is responsible for assessing hunger situations around the world. In the IPC scale, there are five levels of the food situation in a country or region. The highest - and worst - is level five: "catastrophe/famine". Below this, we speak of famine crises. Until now, level four ("emergency") applied to the entire Gaza Strip.
Four famines in the previous 15 years
According to IPC data, four famines have been confirmed in the past 15 years: 2011 in Somalia, 2017 and 2020 in South Sudan and most recently 2024 in Sudan.
