The charge that Israel has triggered a “man-made famine” by obstructing aid reaching the starving people in Gaza is backed by an increasing body of evidence. And clear evidence is what is needed to call a famine – something that is declared only after a highly technical definition and multi-source analysis is matched.
It’s a cautious process. The UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification defines famine as an extreme deprivation of food. Starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition are or will likely be evident.
Famine has only been declared twice in the past decade – in an area of southern Somalia in 2011 and in parts of South Sudan in 2017.
This year we risk the horror of such an event in two places – Gaza and Sudan. They are “humanitarian nightmares”, or “catastrophic”, and a host of other superlative words that mean men, women and children are dying in agony. Wars, and resultant famines, are human-made.
Hunger is a daily part of life for an ever-growing number of people on our planet as the climate crisis wrecks livelihoods in farming, energy and industry. Despite the apparent hopelessness, many bright minds are laudably working hard on solutions to try to deal with it.
The starvation of our fellow human beings because of war needs just as much encouragement to find a resolution and stop the brutality. To respect international law needs statesmanship, it needs integrity and it needs core courage.
Sadly, we have all lost sight of demanding and expecting that in our leaders. Maybe this pivotal moment, this year of elections for 40% of the globe’s population, could just be an opportunity to fill the void of morality at the top but in the meantime we face the utter shame of famine in 2024.
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