1 million women and girls in Gaza Strip face mass starvation

What you probably already know: A “worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding in the Gaza Strip as access to food and other essential items “has plummeted to unprecedented levels.” The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC — which monitors food security for charities and United Nations agencies — warned of “widespread death” if current conditions persist. U.N. Women says 1 million women and girls in Gaza now face mass starvation, violence, and abuse. 

Why? Three thresholds must be reached before famine can be officially declared under an internationally respected system: at least 20% of households face an extreme lack of food (in other words, they’re starving); at least 30% of children under age 5 suffer from acute malnutrition (wasting); and at least two adults or four children under 5 for every 10,000 people die daily from non-trauma causes. As of July 25, famine thresholds have been surpassed for food consumption in most of Gaza and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City, with nearly 17 in 100 children under age 5 now acutely malnourished. The U.N.-affiliated World Food Program said Monday that hunger in Gaza had reached "astonishing levels," with one in three people going multiple days without eating. The World Health Organization recorded 11 malnutrition-related deaths during the first half of the year — on Sunday, it reported 63 malnutrition deaths this month alone, including 24 children under age 5. Gaza’s Health Ministry put the month’s malnutrition death toll at 82. 

What it means: Twenty-two months of war have left the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.1 million people in dire need of aid. The U.N. estimates 90% of people in Gaza have been displaced, many multiple times, since Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, prompting an Israeli military invasion. Israeli evacuation orders and military zones now cover an estimated 88% of Gaza, leaving few safe refuges. The ongoing restriction of humanitarian aid, combined with often-violent incidents of criminal looting and swarms of starving people, has resulted in harrowing images of emaciated children and desperate crowds holding out pots at food distribution sites. Since May, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed trying to access food, often near aid sites guarded by American contractors. Some distribution sites require high-risk journeys that the most vulnerable groups can’t make to retrieve food — most of which requires water and fuel to cook, which people don’t have. 

More than 28,000 women and girls have been killed, most of them mothers who were the sole caretakers of children and elderly relatives, while others endure pregnancy without food and give birth without medical care, according to U.N. Women. Two in five pregnant and breastfeeding women were deemed acutely malnourished in June. “Women and girls in Gaza are facing the impossible choice of starving to death at their shelters or venturing out in search of food and water at the extreme risk of being killed,” U.N. Women Executive Director Sima Bahous said. “Their children are starving to death before their eyes. This is horrific, unconscionable and unacceptable. It is inhumane.”

What happens now? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that “there is no starvation in Gaza.” In a rare show of disagreement, President Donald Trump responded, “I don't know. I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.” U.N. agencies and aid groups warn that without immediate and dramatic improvements in humanitarian aid access, the situation in Gaza will continue to spiral. “All of the children who are currently malnourished will die,” said Dr. Tarek Loubani, the Gaza-based medical director for Glia, a New York City-based international humanitarian organization. “That is, unless there’s an absolutely rapid and consistent reversal of what is happening.” Experts say airdrops of aid packages are insufficient to meet the overwhelming need, and the flow of delivery trucks must be scaled up. The IPC calls for a full and lasting ceasefire to reverse the catastrophe unfolding in front of the world.