Gaza Strip Famine

The crisis involved several related but distinct conditions: inadequate household access to food, acute malnutrition, hunger-related mortality, and the risk or occurrence of area-level famine.[8] The distinction matters because households can experience Phase 5, termed Catastrophe, without their surrounding area meeting the combined requirements for a Famine classification.[8] In August 2025, the IPC classified Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City, as experiencing famine and projected that conditions could spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis; it did not classify the entire Gaza Strip as an area experiencing famine.[3]

Food deliveries, distribution within Gaza, household purchasing power, and access to water and health services all featured in assessments of the emergency.[9][6] Israeli authorities emphasized the scale of food entering the territory, while humanitarian assessments and academic studies distinguished the arrival of supplies from their availability to families.[10][11] A study of January–July 2024 deliveries likewise distinguished the quantity crossing into Gaza from what households could obtain or consume.[12]

Conditions varied substantially between assessment periods.[4][5] Increased assistance helped temporarily avert famine in 2024, while the August 2025 assessment followed renewed deterioration in food access and essential services.[9][13] By December 2025, increased humanitarian and commercial deliveries and reduced fighting had improved conditions, although emergency-level food insecurity and poor diets persisted.[5]

All of Gaza’s population faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2023, and 576,000 people were projected to experience IPC Phase 5 conditions.[14] A March 18, 2024 assessment warned of imminent famine risk: more than a quarter of the population was then experiencing Phase 5 food insecurity, with the proportion projected to reach half the population, approximately 1.1 million people, by July if hostilities and restricted humanitarian access continued.[14] The March projection placed approximately 854,000 people in Phase 4 and 265,000 in Phase 3, within an assessed population of 2.23 million.[4]

The June 2024 review did not establish that famine was then occurring, but it continued to identify a high and sustained risk across Gaza.[15] Increased assistance since March had helped temporarily avoid famine, while 96 percent of Gazans were expected to face Crisis or worse through September.[9] A significant deterioration in humanitarian access could still lead to famine.[9] Expanded food and non-food supplies to northern governorates, together with increased nutrition, water, sanitation, hygiene, and health responses, contributed to the changed assessment.[4]

The June analysis revised assumptions that food entering Gaza would decline: supplies had instead increased.[15] For the assessment period described in contemporary reporting, the estimated proportion in Phase 5 fell from 30 percent to 15 percent, approximately 343,000 people, while Phase 4 fell from 39 percent to 29 percent.[15] A separate account of the June report gave a revised Phase 5 projection of 495,000, compared with the March projection of 1.11 million.[4] Indicators had begun deteriorating again in late May and early June, despite the improvement relative to earlier expectations.[15]

The Famine Review Committee’s June examination also addressed whether northern Gaza had crossed famine thresholds during April.[16] It could not determine whether those thresholds had been passed and found that a FEWS NET analysis describing famine since at least April 1 was not plausible given uncertainty and insufficient convergence among the supporting evidence.[16] The committee stressed that this uncertainty did not negate extreme human suffering, identified a shortage of essential current information about well-being, and urged humanitarian access and field surveys.[16]

By September–October 2024, more than 1.8 million of Gaza’s approximately 2.1 million residents were assessed as experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity, and famine risk persisted.[17] Humanitarian access had improved in April after American urging, but aid subsequently fell to less than half its earlier peak.[17] Difficulties moving supplies through crossings and checkpoints and delivering them safely within Gaza contributed to continuing food insecurity.[9]

A complete Israeli block on aid beginning March 2, 2025, was followed by a further dramatic deterioration in humanitarian conditions.[18] By early May, the entire population faced high levels of acute food insecurity, with roughly half a million people facing starvation.[18] Subsequent humanitarian reporting described renewed risks of hunger and malnutrition, and a June update warned of a growing likelihood of famine.[18] The August IPC assessment attributed the crisis to halted humanitarian and commercial food deliveries during March and April, critically low volumes through July, and the collapse of local food production.[1]

Between April and mid-July 2025, more than 20,000 children were reported admitted for acute-malnutrition treatment, including more than 3,000 described as severely malnourished.[13] Food-consumption assessments described one in three people going without food for days, while the proportion of households experiencing extreme hunger doubled between May and July.[13] On July 29, an IPC alert endorsed by its Famine Review Committee stated that the “worst-case scenario of Famine is currently playing out” in Gaza.[13] It identified intensified conflict and displacement, exceptionally low access to food and essential services, and rising hunger-related deaths, stating that the food-consumption threshold had been reached across most of Gaza and the acute-malnutrition threshold in Gaza City.[13]

On August 22, 2025, the IPC classified famine in Gaza Governorate, with the assessment covering conditions between July 1 and August 15.[3][2] Approximately 514,000 people across the Strip were estimated to face catastrophic conditions, including about 280,000 in Gaza Governorate; the Strip-wide total was projected to rise to 641,000 by the end of September.[3] Around 1.07 million people, or 54 percent of the assessed population, were in Phase 4, with another 396,000 in Phase 3.[2] Famine was projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September, while access constraints prevented a formal classification of North Gaza.[13][1]

The food-insecurity component of the August assessment used telephone interviews conducted from July 30 to August 4, while the acute-malnutrition assessment included field measurements.[3] Although 55,600 metric tons of food entered Gaza during the first half of August, the assessment concluded that incoming supplies remained insufficient to offset prolonged deficits.[3] Its account of deterioration also identified restricted access to water and medical services, damage to aid-distribution infrastructure and agricultural land, and displacement.[2] It projected that the number of children under five experiencing acute malnutrition could reach 132,000 by June 2026.[2]

Reported mortality figures covered different periods and categories.[18][19] An August 21 humanitarian update recorded 204 malnutrition-related deaths since July 1, including 51 children.[18] Gaza’s Health Ministry separately claimed 361 malnutrition deaths, including 130 children, between October 7, 2023, and September 2, 2025.[19] Hospital-based observations also identified nutritional problems among pregnant and breastfeeding women: 70–75 percent of approximately 300 women arriving daily at al-Awda Hospital reportedly lacked adequate food or supplements, with doctors reporting anemia, miscarriages, and other pregnancy complications.[19]

After the October 10, 2025 ceasefire and increased aid, food-security conditions improved.[20] The December assessment found that famine conditions were no longer prevailing in Gaza Governorate or elsewhere in the assessed territory.[20] For October 16–November 30, Gaza was classified at area level as Phase 4, with approximately one million people in Phase 3, 500,000 in Phase 4, and 100,000 in household-level Phase 5 Catastrophe.[20] Rafah was not assessed because of depopulation and lack of data, and information about northern Gaza remained limited.[21]

The improvement was linked to reduced fighting and increased humanitarian and commercial food deliveries, but conditions remained fragile.[5] Assistance was meeting basic survival needs while diets remained poor, and many families could not afford more nutritious food.[20] Acute malnutrition remained critical in Gaza City and severe in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis.[5] Approximately 101,000 children were projected to experience acute malnutrition over the following year.[5]

Under continuation of the late-2025 trend, the population in catastrophic conditions was projected to decline to around 1,900 by April 2026.[5] A worst-case scenario involving renewed hostilities and halted aid and commercial inflows nevertheless placed the entire Strip at risk of famine through mid-April.[22] These scenarios accompanied the finding that famine was no longer present; they were projections about possible subsequent conditions rather than a new area-level declaration.[22]

A July 2026 assessment estimated that approximately 1.2 million people, or 59 percent of the population assessed, experienced acute food insecurity during April–June.[7] It projected that more than 1.4 million, approximately 67 percent, could face acute food insecurity by the end of 2026, and that about 74,200 children aged six months to five years could experience acute malnutrition by April 2027, alongside tens of thousands of pregnant and breastfeeding women.[7] Conditions were described as extremely fragile despite improvement following the ceasefire; the reporting did not identify a new famine classification.[7]

A UNICEF-coordinated survey reported in August 2026 used weight, height, and mid-upper-arm circumference measurements and found acute-malnutrition rates of 0.2–0.8 percent across Gaza.[23] Other nutritional problems remained: approximately one in eight children experienced stunting, unhealthy food consumption reached 78 percent in Khan Younis and Rafah, and about 64 percent of children in Gaza City and northern Gaza did not eat fruit or vegetables.[23] Nutrition had improved since early 2026, although needs remained high and later deterioration remained possible.[23]

By October 29, 2026, declining funding had led the World Food Programme to reduce its assistance recipients from 1.6 million to 1.1 million, daily hot meals from 250,000 to 150,000, and monthly flour rations from 50 kilograms to 25 kilograms per family.[24] Its funding for operations in Gaza and the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — had fallen by more than half compared with previous years, and it sought another $450 million to sustain operations through March 2027.[24] Households were reportedly coping through parents skipping meals, families returning to one meal daily, and people begging or searching rubble for food.[24] These reports described worsening food insecurity rather than a new famine determination.[24]

The IPC, established in 2004 as a joint initiative involving governments, United Nations agencies, and international nongovernmental organizations, classifies food insecurity in five phases.[4] Its three most severe categories are Crisis, Phase 3; Emergency, Phase 4; and Catastrophe/Famine, Phase 5.[4] At household level, Phase 5 denotes extreme food deprivation without the means to obtain food.[8] An area-level famine determination additionally requires evidence across food consumption or livelihoods, acute malnutrition, and mortality, followed by a famine-review process.[8]

Reference thresholds include extreme food gaps affecting more than 20 percent of households, acute malnutrition affecting more than 30 percent of children, and a crude death rate above two people per 10,000 per day.[8] Reporting on the August 2025 assessment also described an under-five mortality threshold of at least four deaths per 10,000 children daily from starvation or malnutrition-related causes.[2] Household catastrophe totals and an area-level famine classification therefore describe different aspects of an emergency, as illustrated by the persistence of roughly 100,000 people in Catastrophe after famine was no longer classified in December 2025.[20][8]

Measurements of supply provide another distinct category of evidence.[12] A study of food supplied through Israeli crossings and airdrops from January through July 2024 used COGAT shipment records, food labels, composition tables, and adjustments for projected losses.[12] It calculated that 478,229 metric tons had entered during those seven months, equivalent to an average of 3,004 kilocalories per person daily.[12] Recorded tonnage and nutritional content generally increased over the period, except for a decline in February compared with January.[12]

After conservative adjustments for food loss and Gaza’s age distribution, supplied energy, protein, and fat exceeded Sphere standards, while dietary iron did not.[12] Except in February, the study calculated that food crossing into Gaza exceeded minimum per-capita humanitarian requirements.[12] Its findings concerned supplies entering Gaza, not proof that those supplies reached households, and reliable information on important dimensions of access and consumption was unavailable.[12]

A separate food-security publication distinguished availability, meaning food entering Gaza, from accessibility, meaning food reaching households.[11] It identified availability, accessibility, utilization, stability, sustainability, and agency as relevant dimensions of food-and-nutrition planning.[11] Its authors considered supply adequate during at least January–July 2024, while noting the absence of reliable distribution data and assessing household access as apparently controlled by Hamas.[11]

Israeli authorities repeatedly presented delivery figures as evidence of substantial humanitarian provision.[1][5] For the period beginning August 1, 2025, COGAT claimed incoming food aid equivalent to 4,400 calories per person daily, alongside 132 million meals distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and more than 90 community kitchens producing 600,000 meals daily.[1] In December, it cited 600–800 incoming aid trucks daily, approximately 70 percent carrying food, and around 30,000 trucks carrying more than 500,000 tons of food since the ceasefire began.[5] These figures measured reported entries or organized meal provision rather than independently established household consumption.[1][5]

For October 2025–June 2026, COGAT reported approximately 1.78 million tons of food entering Gaza, which it described as roughly three times the World Food Programme’s identified requirement.[10] It also reported an approximately 72 percent decline in staple-food prices between September 2025 and May 2026.[10] Humanitarian organizations generally recognized improvement after the ceasefire while continuing to identify displacement, infrastructure damage, distribution difficulties, and severe vulnerability to food insecurity.[10]

Distribution and affordability remained important even where food was physically present.[11][6] Humanitarian assessments identified high prices, liquidity shortages, and limited purchasing power as barriers to access.[6] Aid providers and UN officials pointed to coordination complications and delays involving Israel, while Israeli officials emphasized security problems and inadequate UN distribution capacity.[9] American reporting also identified Israeli actions that delayed or adversely affected deliveries, while Israel maintained that it was not limiting aid.[9]

In October 2026, Israeli security officials alleged that Hamas charged merchants up to 10,000 shekels per incoming truck and demanded cash equivalent to sales of 30 percent of its contents.[25] They said merchants were declining to collect shipments, contributing to higher prices; Hamas countered that Israel was blocking merchants and trade routes.[25] A separate account described merchant strikes following alleged threats and charges, with COGAT warning that the stoppage could reduce goods entering by about 300 trucks daily.[26] The ceasefire arrangement was reported to provide for approximately 600 trucks daily, split roughly equally between international organizations and private merchants.[26]

An Israeli estimate that 250 monitored trucks daily could meet civilian needs addressed a different question from the agreement’s stated 600-truck intake.[25][26] At the end of October, COGAT maintained that 600 aid trucks continued to enter each day and that incoming food remained twice the UN minimum it cited, even as food-assistance reductions were worsening household conditions.[24]

The December 2025 finding that famine was no longer prevailing coexisted with about 1.6 million people facing high acute food insecurity, including more than 500,000 in emergency conditions.[5] The assessment recorded improvement without describing the end of the food emergency; poor dietary quality and unaffordability of nutritious foods remained consequential even when assistance covered basic survival needs.[5]

The crisis also affected groups with particular nutritional needs.[19][7] Reported pregnancy complications, shortages of food and supplements among breastfeeding women, and projections of childhood acute malnutrition extended beyond the question of whether an area crossed a famine threshold.[19][7] The 2026 survey’s combination of low measured acute malnutrition, persistent stunting, and limited consumption of fruit and vegetables likewise documented different dimensions of nutritional health rather than a single interchangeable indicator.[23]

Humanitarian access had consequences beyond food tonnage alone.[9][2] Assessments connected deterioration to displacement, damage to agricultural land and distribution infrastructure, and inadequate water and medical services, while the 2024 improvement involved expanded nutrition, sanitation, hygiene, and health responses as well as food supplies.[4][2] Late-2026 cuts to organized assistance demonstrated another source of vulnerability: reduced funding could diminish meals and household rations even while Israeli authorities reported substantial continuing border entries.[24]

The International Court of Justice concluded in its advisory opinion that Gaza’s local population had been inadequately supplied within the meaning of Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.[18] It consequently held that Israel, as the occupying Power, was obliged to agree to and facilitate relief schemes.[18] This was a legal conclusion about supplies and relief obligations, distinct from the IPC’s technical classification of famine in a particular area and period.[18]

Israel’s response before the Court maintained that aid had entered at an unprecedented scale after the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating in late May 2025 and had far exceeded immediate civilian needs.[18] The same legal account recorded increased malnutrition deaths and the August famine determination.[18] Supply levels, actual household access, nutritional outcomes, and legal obligations therefore remained separate subjects within the wider humanitarian emergency.[12][18]

Israel rejected the August 2025 determination as methodologically flawed, alleging selective or biased data, inadequate consideration of aid deliveries, and omission of information it had supplied.[2][6] A 58-page Israeli review released in September challenged the use of mid-upper-arm circumference rather than weight-for-height measurements, the representativeness of samples and selected surveys, and whether mortality evidence met the famine threshold.[6] Earlier Israeli objections to the March 2024 assessment had also challenged water-availability estimates and alleged outdated information and overlooked food availability.[27]

The August determination used a “reasonable evidence” rather than “solid evidence” standard.[1] Critical analysis by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies disputed the inference that collapsed monitoring systems concealed mortality sufficient to complete the famine criteria and questioned the treatment of child-malnutrition measurements, including a 15 percent arm-circumference threshold.[28] An August 30 clarification explained that additional malnutrition data absent from the initial report had informed the assessment; Israel disputed those data and the forecast of geographical expansion.[6]

The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs argued that ineffective internal distribution was central, citing reported aid totals of 1,872,155 tons through July 2025, 98 million Gaza Humanitarian Foundation meals through July 30, and interception of 1,043 of 1,090 UN trucks in a June account.[29] Its reported breakdown included no facilitated aid from March 19 through May 18.[29] In later commentary, the center rejected a deliberate Israeli starvation policy and characterized the famine assessment as discredited; these were its contested conclusions.[30]

A 2026 media account of low childhood wasting also challenged the choice of measurements used in 2025, but did not supply the underlying dataset or presentation.[31] Later nutrition surveys, the June 2024 review, the August 2025 classification, and the December improvement concerned different periods or indicators and did not, by themselves, resolve disputes about one another.[15][23]