ICSPR The UN Declaration of Gaza as a Famine Zone Requires Mandatory International Intervention to Halt Famine and Genocidal War, Impose Sanctions, Hold Israel Accountable, and Provide International Protection for Palestinians

Date: 22 August 2025

Press Release

ICSPR: The UN Declaration of Gaza as a Famine Zone Requires Mandatory International Intervention to Halt Famine and Genocidal War, Impose Sanctions, Hold Israel Accountable, and Provide International Protection for Palestinians

The International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSPR) follows with deep concern the United Nations’ official, albeit delayed, declaration of the catastrophic famine unfolding in the Gaza Strip. This declaration exposes the grim and tragic reality in which Gaza’s population is living. According to specialized UN agencies (FAO, UNICEF, WHO, WFP, UNRWA, IPC), more than half a million people face the risk of dying from hunger. The announcement confirms that famine is the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli occupation throughout its genocidal war.

The declaration indicates that the population of Gaza is now in phases four and five of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which correspond to acute hunger and catastrophic hunger. The IPC team confirmed that all criteria for declaring famine in Gaza have already been met: 20% of households face severe food shortages, 30% of children suffer from acute malnutrition, and two people per 10,000 are dying daily from hunger. So far, more than 271 people—including 112 children, half of them within just the last three weeks—have died from starvation. The report highlights that 290,000 children and 55,000 pregnant women suffer from acute malnutrition that threatens their survival. Dozens of critical cases reach hospitals daily due to starvation. The report further warns of famine expansion by September to include Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis.

ICSPR stresses that the UN declaration of famine is the first of its kind in the Middle East, and the fifth in modern history. It also underscores that this famine could have been prevented had border crossings been opened and UN agencies allowed to deliver aid. Despite repeated UN warnings about genocide and famine risks, Israel continued its siege and closure of crossings, blocking and obstructing humanitarian aid, intensifying bombings and attacks on Gaza, threatening to destroy Gaza City and forcibly displace residents, systematically destroying food systems and water sources, and restricting humanitarian access. It also fueled chaos by arming gangs that looted aid convoys, preventing delivery to affected populations, in addition to militarizing humanitarian aid and obstructing UN agencies, particularly UNRWA, attempting instead to replace it with the U.S.-Israeli so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” which entrenched famine and caused the killing and injury of thousands of starving civilians at its four distribution points. Moreover, the near-total closure of border crossings for over four months imposed a humanitarian catastrophe whereby the entire population of Gaza now suffers from famine and complete food deprivation in varying forms.

ICSPR points out that Israel responded to mounting international pressure with denial and mockery, later resorting to partial and inadequate openings allowing limited aid to absorb global outrage at the scale of the humanitarian disaster. Only about 2,000 trucks have entered Gaza over the past 25 days (less than 15% of actual humanitarian needs), alongside ineffective airdrops. Israel continues to obstruct fuel, medical supplies, infant formula, and nutritional supplements, resulting in the collapse of the already exhausted and destroyed health system, now operating at less than a quarter of its capacity amid growing numbers of wounded and sick patients whose conditions have worsened due to service collapse.

ICSPR recalls that from October 2023 until August 2025, Israel committed systematic genocide that killed over 62,000 Palestinians, including approximately 19,000 children and 12,000 women, and injured more than 156,000 others, many with permanent disabilities. Thousands remain missing under rubble. Nearly 90% of Gaza’s population (around two million people) has been forcibly displaced into less than 15% of the Strip’s land area, living in poverty, famine, thirst, and disease. One million residents in Gaza City and northern Gaza face the threat of mass forced displacement southward under a colonial plan to reoccupy Gaza, empty its north, and displace its population.

ICSPR believes that the UN declaration is a clear admission that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of genocide. This places the international community, third states, and international and regional organizations before an urgent ethical, legal, and humanitarian responsibility to act immediately to halt famine and genocide. Ongoing silence and inaction amount to complicity and partnership in these crimes. The UN famine declaration represents a moral and legal stain on the conscience of the world and requires urgent measures to save what remains of life before it is too late.

ICSPR calls on the international community, the UN, third states party to the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention, and international organizations to urgently intervene to stop genocide and famine, open all crossings to ensure the unimpeded flow of food, medicine, and fuel, enable humanitarian organizations to operate freely, and bring in specialized medical teams, medicines, and nutritional supplements to save the lives of children, patients, women, and all those starving, and to ensure hospitals continue operating.

ICSPR further urges the UN, third states, especially the European Union, and all free people of the world to impose sanctions and boycotts on Israel, prosecute its leaders before the International Criminal Court and through universal jurisdiction in international courts, ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, enforce the rulings of the International Court of Justice and UN resolutions, and activate the “Uniting for Peace” resolution by the UN General Assembly given the Security Council’s repeated failure to establish an international protection force for Palestinians—toward ending the Israeli occupation and safeguarding regional and international peace and security.