Lotan: Numbers reveal how Gaza has become the focus of famine in the world policy

Hunger is destroyed in the Gaza Strip, as this is the first time that 100% of the population, who numbered 2.1 million, suffers from severe food security, until the matter reached the limit of famine.

With this sentence, Lotan newspaper opened a report by Duk Quang Nagwin explaining how the warning issued on July 29 has become a “integrated phased classification of food security” a warning cry, and what does these borders mean, and why Gaza is today the scene of such a food crisis?

How does science measure famine?

When hunger becomes a daily reality for millions of people, its extremist form – which is famine – has been determined since 2004, according to accurate scientific standards – as the writer says – built on the acute food crisis in Somalia, and the need for a unified tool to evaluate food insecurity and better direct humanitarian aid.

Considering that “the integrated classification of food security stages” is the leading international reference in measuring and classifying hunger crises, it unites the United Nations agencies and NGOs on a specific methodology, and its measure of food insecurity is classified in 5 increasingly intense stages, representing the fifth stage, “disaster/famine”, its summit.

An entire people on the brink of collapse

To realize the scale of the disaster, it is useful to compare the crisis in Gaza with other major food crises. According to the integrated classification data for the stages of food security, 100% of the population of Gaza, or 2.1 million people, suffer from severe food security, in the stages from 3 to 5, as the necessity of urgent intervention begins from the third stage.

However, what distinguishes Gaza is fundamentally the inclusiveness of hunger, unlike Sudan, as the crisis is still focused in specific areas, the Palestinian sector is completely trapped, after 88% of its lands became under eviction orders or classified military areas.

Although the population of Sudan in the fifth stage is greater in terms of absolute numbers, Gaza has the highest percentage of its population in this catastrophic situation, as 22% of its population reached the same stage, compared to 1% in Sudan.

Whether we call it famine, humanitarian catastrophe, or collective killing, the result remains the same, so Gaza is dying, and as NGOs repeat bitterly, the declaration of famine will be too late

Death starved before the declaration of famine

However, the mere fact that the five population is at the lowest threshold of food insecurity is not enough to declare famine, because bypassing this threshold requires that 3 conditions be fulfilled according to the integrated phase classification of food security, namely:

• Five families suffer from severe diet.
• 30% of children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition (wasting).
• The death rate exceeds two adults per day or 4 children per thousand people due to hunger, or what is related to malnutrition.

These technical standards may seem a bit harsh, yet the integrated phased classification of food security confirmed 4 famines in the past 15 years, the first of which is in Somalia in 2011, the second and third in South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and the third in Sudan in 2024.

Gaza may become the fifth, but a technical obstacle still prevents this – according to the newspaper – after the first two criteria are met, as it is still difficult to document the third standard related to death using the methodology used.

Destroyer

This crisis stems from a long -term gradual impoverishment, when Israel imposed a gradually suffocating siege on the Gaza economy in 2007, after the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) took control of it, which made the population dependent on international aid.

In response to the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israel imposed a comprehensive siege, showing food, water, medicine and fuel supplies, in conjunction with a systematic destruction with rare intensity, during which more than 60,000 people were killed directly with bombs and bullets, most of them women and children, and destroyed 70% of buildings or damage, according to the United Nations.

The prices of the few available commodities increased sharply, until the price of the flour increased by more than 3000%

In addition, Israel has eliminated all food supplies, and made more than 95% of agricultural lands not suitable for cultivation, preventing hunting and reaching the sea since July 12, and the few assistance that reaches only a drop in the sea of endless needs, says the writer.

Therefore, the prices of the few available commodities increased sharply, until the price of the flour increased by more than 3000%, and access to aid became a deadly task, during which more than a thousand people were killed while trying to get food between late May and in late July, most of them near military distribution sites, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In front of this reality – as the writer says – he loses a distinction between the declared and unannounced famine. Whether we have a human famine or catastrophe, or a collective killing, the result remains the same, Gaza is dying, and as NGOs repeat bitterly, by declaring famine the time has passed.