In an extremely alarming UN-backed report published a couple of weeks ago, experts warned that famine is immediately imminent for 300,000 Palestinians residents in northern Gaza; that half the population of Gaza (1.1.million people) is facing famine between mid-March and mid-July; and that there is a marked increase in acute malnutrition among children (as well as pregnant and breast-feeding women) posing grave risks to their health and mortality.
Concurrent to this report’s publication, deaths of children due to starvation began to be recorded by the World Health Organization and reported by UN OCHA. The latest UN OCHA update, dated 3 April, states that 28 children have now died of malnutrition and dehydration.
This cascading human-made catastrophe has been gravely foreseeable since day three of the intensified hostilities, when Israel’s defence minister announced on 9 October the imposition of a ‘total siege’ on Gaza. On 13 October, LPHR published a legal briefing outlining that the declaration clearly appeared to amount to a policy of starvation of the civilian population of Gaza in serious violation of international humanitarian law, and furthermore a clearly apparent war crime that may rise to crimes against humanity.
At that time, we called upon Israel to immediately end its siege on Gaza and rapidly permit the entry of humanitarian relief. We further called upon the international community to act decisively to immediately cease the hostilities due to overwhelming civilian suffering.
These imperative calls are devastatingly extant nearly six months on. This is underlined by the International Court of Justice issuing, last week, new legally binding orders on Israel which focus specifically on famine and starvation:
“The State of Israel shall, in conformity with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza, in particular the spread of famine and starvation:
(a) Take all necessary and effective measures to ensure, without delay, in full co-operation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance, including food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation requirements, as well as medical supplies and medical care to Palestinians throughout Gaza, including by increasing the capacity and number of land crossing points and maintaining them open for as long as necessary;
(b) Ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit acts which constitute a violation of any of the rights of the Palestinians in Gaza as a protected group under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, including by preventing, through any action, the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance.”
This extended blog will summarise the key findings of the expert report on impending famine in Gaza followed by a summary legal assessment.
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Imminent famine in Gaza with children particularly affected
On 18 March 2024, an updated report on food insecurity in the Gaza Strip was issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC Global Initiative), a global partnership of organisations including the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
It warns that in Gaza’s two northern governorates, where 300,000 people remain trapped, famine is expected to arrive between now and May. It also alarmingly reports that acute malnutrition in children younger than 5 years old is rapidly rising.
A famine classification is the highest on the IPC scale (Phase 5) and occurs when at least 20 percent of the population face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent – meaning that people experience the most extreme and visible form of undernutrition – and two out of 1,000 people die from starvation on a daily basis.
The IPC Global Initiative projects that half of the population of Gaza – 1.1 million people, approximately 550,000 of whom are children – is expected to face catastrophic famine conditions between mid-March and mid-July. This is the highest number of people ever recorded as facing catastrophic hunger by the IPC system.
Its projection for 16 March – 15 July 2024 is:
- 265,000 people facing crisis levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 3)
- 854,000 people facing emergency levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 4)
- 1.1 million people facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 5)
Before the October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian armed groups and the start of Israel’s massive military response in Gaza, an estimated 1% of the population in Gaza faced acute malnutrition. According to the updated IPC Global Initiative report, nutrition screenings conducted at shelters and health centres in northern Gaza found that acute malnutrition has increased to as much as:
- 9.1% in January; and,
- 16.5% in February.
Children younger than 2 years of age in northern Gaza have experienced a greater increase in acute malnutrition during January (16.2%) and February (29.2%). Of these, almost 3% suffer from severe wasting: the most life-threatening form of malnutrition.
Acute malnutrition is a form of under-nutrition caused by a decrease in consumption and / or illness that results in sudden weight loss or oedema. Children with acute malnutrition have low weight for height.
Severe wasting means that children are dangerously thin for their height. Unless these children receive the urgent treatment that they so desperately need, they are at a high risk of medical complications and death.
Aid is relatively more available in the southern Gaza, and even here, 5% of children under 2 years of age are acutely malnourished.
The numbers of young children in Gaza affected are expected to accelerate alarmingly in a status quo or escalation scenario. The IPC Global Initiative report estimates that the prevalence of moderate or severe acute malnutrition among children aged 6 to 59 months in Gaza will be:
- If there was a ceasefire = 8 – 10%
- Status quo (i.e. current situation) = 13 – 16%
- If the situation escalates = 20 – 45%.
Severe deprivation of needed life-sustaining aid
The IPC Global Initiative report clarifies that from a pre-7 October average of 500 trucks a day of which 150 carrying food, in the period between 7 October 2023 to 24 February 2024 only 90 trucks per day, of which only 60 carrying food, entered the Gaza Strip. The report then states:
“Consequently, virtually all households are skipping meals every day and adults are reducing their meals so that children can eat. In the northern governorates, in nearly two thirds of the households, people went entire days and nights without eating at least 10 times in the last 30 days. In the southern governorates, this applies to one third of the households.”
According to UN OCHA, in March, Israeli authorities denied 30 per cent of humanitarian aid missions to northern Gaza, and continues to deny UNRWA – the main provider of life-saving services – access to the north to deliver emergency food assistance and other basic supplies. On 31 March, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Martin Griffiths, reaffirmed that “UNRWA is the backbone of the humanitarian operation in Gaza [and] any effort to distribute aid without them is simply doomed to fail.”
The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that to address basic food needs, the people trapped in Gaza will require at least 300 trucks to enter Gaza every single day to distribute food, especially in the North. Since the beginning of the year and as of 17 March, the WFP only managed to take nine convoys to the north of Gaza.
In the near six-months that have followed the horrific 7 October attacks and the ensuing massive escalation of hostilities characterised by clearly apparent serious violations of international law, the Palestinian population of Gaza (at least half of whom are children) have been subjected to mass unlawful killing and maiming, forced displacement from their homes with no safe place to flee, and severe deprivation of the basic necessities to survive.
Diseases are rampant. Famine in imminent. Water is at a trickle. Food production has come to a halt. One million children are facing imminent famine and grave risk of starving to death. According to UN OCHA, as of 3 April, at least 28 children have already starved to death.
As the International Court of Justice has strikingly reaffirmed in last week’s new legally binding orders upon Israel, the basic necessities to sustain human life – medicine, drinking water, food, electricity, fuel, clothes, hygiene, sanitation and shelter – must be immediately permitted, unhindered and at scale, to the entire civilian population of Gaza.
Summary Legal Overview
Legal obligation on occupying power to ensure food and medical supplies for the population: Article 55 of the Geneva Convention (IV)
Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that the occupying power i.e. Israel has the legal duty of ensuring that foodstuffs and medication supplies are made available to civilians if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.
Clearly, the resources in Gaza are drastically inadequate, and basic necessities for human survival are not being permitted access in sufficient quantities to civilians who so desperately need it.
Israeli authorities prevention and onerous restriction on adequate foodstuffs, medication and basic necessities from entering Gaza is in direct violation of its civilian protection obligations under Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Prohibition of Starvation under International Law
On 9 October, Israel’s Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, stated: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.”
In a compelling specialist assessment of the legal consequences of the Israeli Defence Minister’s order, a leading international law authority on siege starvation, Tom Dannenbaum, concluded that:
“This order commands the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, which is a violation of international humanitarian law and a war crime (ICC Statute, article 8(2)(b)(xxv)). ”
LPHR agrees with Dannenbaum’s assessment. As alluded to in the introduction to this blog, international humanitarian law strictly prohibits starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare in both international and non-international armed conflicts. Furthermore, starvation as a method of warfare is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts. It may also satisfy the legal threshold for the crime against humanity of inhumane acts (ICC Statute, article 7(1)(K)) and, if deaths arise as is now being reported, the crime against humanity of extermination (ICC Statute, article 7)(1)(b)).
It is important to be clarify that the term ‘starvation’ should be understood to encompass deprivation not just of food and water, but also of other goods essential for survival in a particular context. Furthermore, the crime of starvation does not require that victims die from starvation, only that they should intentionally be deprived of objects indispensable to their survival. This may include depriving individuals of their ability to obtain food, degrading public health, and disrupting access to clean water, or deliberate denial of food and arbitrarily refusing to allow relief operations where the survival of the civilian population is threatened.
We expect the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to specifically focus on starvation-related international crimes as part of its investigation into the Situation in Palestine. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has indeed made public statements which clearly indicate that this grave issue is a firm focus, as noted by LPHR in our tweets last October and earlier this week.
Core International Humanitarian Law principles
Parties to a conflict are obliged to adhere at all times to key international humanitarian law principles that govern the conduct of hostilities: distinguishing between civilians / civilian objects and combatants / military objects, proportionality, and precautions in attack.
The fundamental principle of distinction (Protocol I, article 48) is violated by Israel’s near-total siege on Gaza, even if assuming that its goal is only to starve Hamas combatants, because the deprivation of sustenance is targeted initially at the civilian population. As a factual and legal matter, any operation targeted at the population of Gaza as a whole is an operation targeted at a civilian population.
Equally, the principle of proportionality in attack (Protocol 1, article 51(5)(b)) clearly appears to be violated by the siege warfare conducted by Israel since 9 October, given its effective consequence of starvation of Gaza’s civilian population of over two million Palestinians.
Crime Against Humanity of Persecution
On 24 January, LPHR published a landmark independent legal opinion by an eminent team of legal experts that finds the closure of Gaza since 2007, including its intensification since 7 October 2023, to constitute the crime against humanity of persecution committed against Gaza’s Palestinian population, including over 1 million children.
The defining features of this crime – considered the quintessential crime against humanity – are (i) there has been a severe deprivation of fundamental human rights, and (ii) this harmful deprivation is discriminatory against a protected group.
The addendum to the legal opinion includes a detailed factual overview of deprivation of sustenance in Gaza post 7 October, and then makes the following clear legal assessment:
“Taken together, these factors persuade us that people in Gaza are being deprived of their fundamental human rights. Most obviously, the violations of the rights to an adequate standard of living [which includes adequate food and nutrition, clothing, housing and the necessary conditions of care when required] and to health, which we described in our Opinion, continue and have become even graver. Additionally, the blanket and almost exceptionless closure of Gaza’s borders continues and exacerbates the violations we described of the rights to freedom of movement and to family life. We emphasize that this is certainly not a comprehensive assessment of the human rights violated by the conditions we have described above.” [Paragraph 35]
The legal opinion and its addendum by the eminent team of legal experts necessarily compels the prompt investigation and effective prosecution of individuals responsible for the closure of Gaza, including its intensification since 7 October 2023, on the basis that it plainly constitutes the crime against humanity of persecution.
The independent legal opinion and its addendum has been submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court by LPHR.
The Crime of Genocide
As noted in the introduction, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its Order dated 28 March has taken the significant step of explicitly naming ‘the spread of starvation and famine’, and issued legally binding orders aimed at halting it.
This clear warning follows the ICJ’s prior Order dated 26 January in which it significantly determined there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza due to Israel’s actions. Among its specific demands of 26 January, the ICJ ordered:
“The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
By issuing a further order a couple of months later that essentially reiterates its prior order, but with greater precision and emphasis, the world’s foremost legal body has delivered an abundant signal that it is gravely concerned by Israel’s ongoing intransigence to ensuring adequate access to life-sustaining aid for the civilian population of Gaza.
Israel has been put on firm notice by the International Court of Justice that it must properly act now, or otherwise face very serious legal accountability consequences in the future.
Conclusion
For nearly half a year, over two million Palestinians in Gaza have had inflicted upon them a human-made mass starvation calamity, with no end in sight.
This stark reality exists in addition to other horrors being perpetrated against them: relentless bombardment, forced displacement, grave risk of infection and contracting diseases.
Gaza’s children are at particular risk of acute malnutrition and death by starvation. They do not have anything to do with this conflict and have suffered, and continue to suffer, unimaginable acts of brutality.
LPHR urges the UK government and the international community to take immediate decisive action to address the imminent risk of famine in Gaza and persuade the government of Israel to finally change its destructive course, including by:
- start referring to specific violations of international law relating to starvation in its public statements.
- use all available leverage – in accordance with its legal obligation to ensure respect for international humanitarian law – with Israel to ensure that food and all other life-sustaining aid is allowed immediate access to all civilians in Gaza.
- act in full adherence with its legal obligation to ensure respect for international humanitarian law by calling for and using all available legal means to achieve an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
An enduring catastrophe is imminent without urgent decisive action now; and legal accountability must then surely follow.
Karima Al-Saidi, Tareq Shrourou