Spanish
Geneva.- The UN Deputy Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Tom Fletcher, stated that the famine officially declared today in the Gaza Strip has been promoted as a weapon of war in the context of the war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas.
"We are facing a famine that will haunt us all, because it is a predictable and avoidable famine, a famine caused by cruelty, justified by revenge, fostered by indifference and sustained by complicity," Geneva told the press.
Read more: UN officially declares famine situation in the Gaza Strip
He maintained that the hunger that has spread through Gaza, but hits the north of this territory hardest, is occurring "a few hundred meters from the food", which is on the Israeli side of the border, but which the government is not letting through. When asked if he has contact with the Israeli authorities, Fletcher replied that he has a communication channel with the United States, Israel's main ally, thus implying that the Israeli government refuses to listen to the UN's humanitarian calls. Famine in Gaza has been declared based on the assessment of evidence collected and analyzed by the most recognized independent international system on food security, which is supported by the United Nations and is known as the "Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)"Its classification consists of five phases, with phase 5 revealing a famine situation and in which northern Gaza is located, where more than half a million people "face catastrophic conditions characterized by hunger, destitution and death".
At the same time, an additional 1.1 million people (54% of the total population) are in phase 4, indicating a food emergency. This indicates that a total of 1.6 million Gazans are suffering from hunger, a third critically due to extreme food deprivation, while the rest of the population is in a "food crisis" situation. More than two hundred deaths recorded in recent weeks, particularly of children, already indicated the obviousness of a situation caused by the Israeli government's blockade of almost all food aid and other basic supplies since the beginning of March, when a ceasefire that lasted nearly two months ended. Therefore, Fletcher directly addressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Friday to ask him to allow the opening of the Gaza border crossings to bring in food. "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 bring food and other supplies without obstacles and massively, as required," he requested. He emphasized that "for many (who have died or are about to die) it is already too late, but not for everyone in Gaza. The senior UN official insisted that food is piling up at the borders due to Israel's systematic obstruction. If Netanyahu's government does not yield to international pressure, which will undoubtedly intensify after this declaration of famine, the CIF anticipates that "between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to worsen even further, with an expansion of the famine" towards the center and south of the enclave. If nothing is done to prevent it, in the coming weeks more than 640,000 people will reach famine. Additionally, 132,000 children under five years of age will suffer from acute malnutrition in May of next year, double in a year, and more than 41,000 of them will be at high risk of death. The UN's human rights chief, Volker Türk, said that the Israeli government is directly responsible for this situation and stressed that using starvation as a method in an armed conflict "is a war crime". He added that deaths resulting from the hunger imposed on Gazans can also be considered "a war crime of intentional killing".
