The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) released a report on Friday saying that the citizens of northern Gaza are threatened by an “imminent and substantial risk of extreme famine.”
The organization defines famine as a situation in which at least 20 percent of households in a given area have an extreme lack of food. An extreme famine is likely to occur between November 2024 and April 2025, the IPC predicted, noting that access to food is “at a critical level and rapidly deteriorating.”
Gaza has been in conflict since the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Israel’s continued response to the kidnapping of hostages led to tensions with neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Iran.
“It is already abundantly clear that the worst-case scenario developed by the analysis team is now playing out in areas in the north of the Gaza Strip,” IPC wrote in the report. “Therefore, it can be assumed that hunger, malnutrition and excess mortality due to malnutrition and disease are increasing rapidly in these areas. Famine thresholds may have already been crossed, but they will be in the near future.”
Agencies such as Oxfam, a British non-governmental organization dedicated to alleviating global poverty, have echoed the IPC’s concerns.
“The situation in northern Gaza is now beyond catastrophic and families there literally have nothing to eat. In southern Gaza, things are also rapidly deteriorating, with markets in Deir El Balah running out of food,” Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s Middle East director, said in a statement.
“Famine has been looming for months and humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam have repeatedly warned of the horrific situation, yet we have been repeatedly prevented from getting sufficient aid to Gaza.”
Israel recently passed a law on October 28 banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency from operating in its territory in parliament. IPC urged the country’s government to take action by delivering food to people in Gaza within days.
“There is a pre-existing and increasing vulnerability of the population after more than a year of war, with multiple displacements of the population due to conflict or evacuation orders, and large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure,” the IPC wrote.
“The unprecedented rate of deterioration and deviation from the most likely scenario requires an extremely urgent response – in days, not weeks.”
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