Famine in northern Gaza is 'imminent,' warns the world's leading authority on hunger

[Uncle Joe]

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The report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, concluded that the entire population in the Gaza Strip, more than 2 million people, are already facing high levels of acute food insecurity. The report, released Monday, warns that famine conditions in northern Gaza may only be days or weeks away, while in central and southern Gaza, famine could occur by July.

The organization's system of evidence-based analysis of hunger was launched two decades ago to track famine in Somalia. It has classified a famine only twice since its founding in 2004 — first in Somalia in 2011 and in South Sudan in 2017.

The IPC determines famine "as an extreme deprivation of food" in which "Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident." It says a famine occurs when 20% of households face "an extreme lack of food"; 30% of children are suffering from acute malnutrition; and two adults or four children per 10,000 people die each day from starvation or acute malnutrition.

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"It really is heartbreaking to see the levels of desperation, hunger, of hopelessness across the entirety of the Strip," Matthew Hollingworth, the Palestine director for the United Nations' World Food Programme, told NPR in a voice memo. "So many mothers who go to sleep listening to the cries of their children because they are still hungry. And many parents who are skipping meals day by day by day just to ensure their children have something every evening."

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To avert famine, Gaza needs about 300 trucks every single day of food, water and medicine, according to Arif Husain, the chief economist at the World Food Programme.

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https://www.npr.org/2024/03/19/1239394316/gaza-famine-israel-humanitarian-aid