An independent group on food security backed by the UN officially confirmed for the first time that a famine is occurring in the Gaza Strip.
“After 22 months of incessant conflict, more than half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterized by hunger, destitution, and death,” the UN stated this Tuesday.
IMAGES: UN. EDITORIAL USE ONLY / ONLY AVAILABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE ACCOMPANYING NEWS (MANDATORY CREDIT).
STATEMENTS BY TOM FLETCHER, UNDER-SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR HUMANITARIAN AFFAIRS AND EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR.
Translation:
- Good morning everyone. Please read the CPI report. From beginning to end. Read it with sadness and with anger. Not as words and numbers, but as names and lives. Have no doubt that this is irrefutable testimony. It is a famine. The famine in Gaza.
It’s a famine we could have prevented if we had been allowed. However, food is piling up at the borders due to Israel’s systematic obstruction. It’s a famine a few hundred meters from food, in fertile land. It’s a famine that first affects the most vulnerable. Each with a name, each with a story.
That strips people of their dignity before stripping them of life. That forces parents to choose which child to feed. That forces people to risk their lives to find food. It is a famine that we have repeatedly warned about. But international media have not been allowed in to cover it, to bear witness.
It’s a famine in 2025, a 21st-century famine watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It’s a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. It’s a famine under the gaze of all of us. We are all responsible for it.
The famine in Gaza is the world’s famine. It is a famine, but what did you do? A famine that will haunt us all, that is foreseeable and avoidable, a famine caused by cruelty, justified by revenge, fostered by indifference and sustained by complicity. It is a famine that must drive the world to act with greater urgency, that must shame the world into acting better.
It’s a famine that, therefore, also asks: And now what? My request, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him: open the northern and southern border crossings, all of them.
Let us receive food and other supplies without obstacles and on the massive scale that is required. End the retaliation. It is too late for many, but not for everyone in Gaza. Enough is enough for the sake of humanity. Let us in. Thank you.
