The deaths of more than 100 Palestinians who had been waiting for an aid convoy on February 29 were a grim reminder of the catastrophe unfolding daily in Gaza. While an independent investigation has yet to establish clear responsibilities for the tragedy, the toll from Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip grows ever higher.
Five months into the conflict, deaths from hunger and thirst are beginning to mount. A report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs quoted claims by the Ministry of Health in Gaza on March 3 that 15 children had died of malnutrition and dehydration at Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, with another six considered to be at grave risk of dying.
Meanwhile, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reported on March 4 that WHO visits to Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals found “severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed”.
Addressing the UN security council on February 27, the deputy executive director of the World Food Programme, Carl Skau, warned of a “real prospect of famine by May”, saying there were more than 500,000 people in Gaza at risk.
He said: “Even before October, two-thirds of the people in Gaza were supported with food assistance. Today, food aid is required by almost the entire population of 2.2 million people. One child in every six under the age of two is acutely malnourished.”
Weaponising starvation
Starvation has always been used as weapon of war. And there is now a considerable body of international law which prohibits it and provides for the prosecution of those responsible for deliberate starvation in conflict.
Article 54 of the Geneva conventions clearly spells this out. In May 2018, the UN security council unanimously adopted resolution 2417 after identifying 74 million people facing starvation as a result of armed conflict.
Resolution 2417 “strongly condemns the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in a number of conflict situations and prohibited by international humanitarian law” and “strongly condemns the unlawful denial of humanitarian access and depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival”.
Intentional starvation is punishable as a war crime by the International Criminal Court (ICC) under article 8 of the Rome statute. In December 2019, the 122 state parties to the ICC parties voted unanimously to extend the court’s jurisdiction to the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Food insecurity
In his 2022 report to the Human Rights Council, the UN rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, said that “conflict and violence were the primary causes of hunger, malnutrition, and famine”, rather than “because there was not enough food to go around”.
A report from the UN security council on February 13 2024 identified more than 330 million people at risk from food insecurity, most because of climate change – or, increasingly, armed conflict. The security council highlighted conflict or post-conflict famines in Syria, Myanmar, Haiti, and Yemen.
In Africa, the report said, 149 million people were living in food insecurity, notably in Sudan, where the World Food Program has said more than 25 million people scattered across Sudan, South Sudan and Chad are “trapped in a spiral” of food insecurity.
The right to food
The right to food is enshrined in the UN’s international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. This recognises the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living, which includes access to “adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions”.
Paradoxically, there is more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet. But, despite being nine years into the UN’s “decade of action on nutrition”, and despite eradicating hunger being the second of the UN’s sustainable development goals, world hunger is once again on the rise.
The UN’s 2023 report on its sustainable goals says that 735 million people, more than 9% of the world’s population, suffer from hunger – 122 million more than in 2019.
The report also found that nearly 1.3 billion people rely entirely on imported food. This is where trade agreements and international trade law can play a significant role in supporting access to food.
In June 2022, a ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization produced a declaration on the emergency response to food insecurity, reinforcing the WTO’s commitment to improve the functioning and long-term resilience of global markets for food and agriculture. The conference also declared that members “shall not impose export prohibitions or restrictions on foodstuffs purchased for non-commercial humanitarian purposes by the World Food Programme”.
But the realisation of the right to food as a human right, and the success of the UN’s pledge to eradicate hunger by 2030, will rely on international cooperation and a balance between liberalising trade and protecting states’ agricultural industries.
In February 2007, 500 experts gathered in Mali for the World Forum for Food Sovereignty. They produced the Nyéléni declaration, which seeks to establish the “right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems”.
The starving people of Gaza – and millions like them around the world – have been denied this basic right for decades. Their plight can be ignored for no longer.