UN aid agencies warn of famine in Gaza Strip. It would be the largest in the world to date. The UN has a definition of when this occurs.
Gaza Strip residents face massive hunger crisis Photo: Mahmoud Issa/Reuters
SEDAN taz | The United Nations has only declared famine twice so far this century: in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017. Both affected population groups that had long been living in absolute misery: in southern Somalia, in the context of extreme drought and against the backdrop of a rise in militias. conflicts and lack of state structures; in the Unity State of South Sudan in the context of three years of civil war and mass exodus. The circumstances were completely different from those in Gaza today.
For international aid organizations, famine is a precisely defined term that should be used sparingly. An area suffers from famine when at least 20 percent of the population does not have access to even the 2,100 kilocalories per day necessary to survive.
30 percent of the total
The population of the Gaza Strip suffers catastrophic hunger
At least 30 percent of children under five years of age must suffer from acute malnutrition, that is, suffering from wasting. And at least 2 out of every 10,000 people die every day from lack of food. This definition is included in the international classification system IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) to measure food safety. This system, developed by the UN in Somalia in 2004, is now the global standard.
Level 5 on a scale of 1 to 5
On the CPI scale of 1 to 5, famine is level 5. The scale goes from the first level, “Minimal,” through “Stressed,” “Crisis,” “Emergency,” and “Disaster” for individual households; For entire areas, the five levels are “food security,” “hunger,” “acute hunger,” “humanitarian emergency,” and “famine.”
Inevitably, many people already suffer “catastrophic” conditions before the 20 or 30 percent mark of the total population that characterizes “famine” is reached. This sometimes causes confusion: UN aid organizations warn of impending famine, even though many people are already suffering. This also applies to the current CPI study on Gaza.
The Level 5 famine “catastrophe” is now affecting 677,000 people, 30 percent of the total population. The situation is particularly bad in the north of the area, where Israel's military operation has devastated almost everything. According to the IPC report, 84 percent of the population already lives at level 5 (disaster/famine) and 8 percent at level 4 (emergency situation). The data is based on household surveys through March 10.
Millions of people are threatened with hunger
In the Gaza Strip as a whole, the number of people in level 5 is expected to increase to 1.107 million people between mid-March and mid-May, according to CPI forecasts, almost half of the total population. With a mortality rate of two hungry people per 10,000 people per day, that would result in more than 200 starvation deaths per day.
First responders do not wait for such massive deaths to occur before acting. Overall, humanitarian assistance is urgently needed from level 3 onwards. Currently, according to CPI figures, only 96,000 people in the Gaza Strip do not live at level 3 or higher. But you're also not at level 1, where you have enough to eat; Nobody in the Gaza Strip has that anymore. They live in Stage 2, “Hunger.”
As the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) states: “During this phase, people struggle to meet their basic needs and need to make significant changes to meet their needs for other foods. Their income is unsustainable and between 5 and 10 percent of the population suffers from acute malnutrition.”
The world's biggest famine to date
These are the current living conditions of the richest 5 percent in the Gaza Strip. As of mid-March, according to the CPI report, this will also be over. So the population in stages 1 and 2 is: zero.
The feared famine in the Gaza Strip would also be the largest in the world to date, with more than 1 million people affected. In Somalia there were 80,000 deaths in 2011 and in South Sudan 490,000 in 2017. In both cases, UN aid organizations were able to launch massive aid operations, something that is also not in sight in Gaza.