📅 August 22, 2025
Gaza Herald — The United Nations’ official confirmation of famine in Gaza calls for an immediate and decisive response from the international community. The UN General Assembly must invoke its authority under the Uniting for Peace resolution to establish a peacekeeping force capable of stopping ongoing crimes, ensuring unrestricted humanitarian access, delivering life-saving food and medicine, and protecting civilians from further atrocities.
More than two million Palestinians in Gaza face an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. Those responsible for this catastrophe must be held fully accountable under international law.
A Deliberate Humanitarian Catastrophe
Although the UN declaration came late, it leaves no doubt that the famine in Gaza is man-made. The Israeli government has intentionally engineered this crisis through policies of systematic starvation, blocking aid convoys, and destroying local food production.
The joint statement issued in Geneva by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, World Food Programme (WFP), and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) confirms that over half a million people in Gaza already face famine conditions.
Data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warns that famine—now gripping northern Gaza—could spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by September 2025. Over 500,000 Palestinians are living in catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while more than a million others face emergency or crisis-level hunger.
Local field data paints an even bleaker picture, with more than 1.5 million Palestinians enduring severe hunger as Gaza’s health system collapses under relentless Israeli attacks. At least 271 people, including 112 children, have already died from starvation, though the real toll is likely far higher.
Aid Distribution or Death Traps?
The creation of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on May 27, 2025, has only deepened the suffering. Its distribution points have become death traps where Israeli forces, sometimes alongside U.S. mercenaries, have killed over 2,000 people and injured more than 15,000 others. Thousands more have died while trying to reach aid trucks in areas under Israeli control.
The foundation deliberately excludes families without able-bodied members—such as the elderly, disabled, or bereaved—condemning tens of thousands to slow, intentional starvation. Even when aid is distributed, it fails to meet basic nutritional needs, lacking essentials like infant formula, children’s food, fresh produce, and protein sources.
International law explicitly forbids using starvation as a weapon of war. Destroying food supplies and agricultural infrastructure essential for civilian survival constitutes a war crime and, on this scale, a crime against humanity.
A Call for Uniting for Peace
Euro-Med Monitor is urging the UN General Assembly to invoke its historic Resolution 377 A(V), known as Uniting for Peace, which empowers the Assembly to act when the Security Council fails due to vetoes or political deadlock.
Such action must include deploying a peacekeeping force to halt attacks on civilians, guarantee unrestricted humanitarian access, protect hospitals and relief workers, lift the blockade, and facilitate Gaza’s reconstruction.
The international community has both a legal and moral duty to stop the genocide unfolding in Gaza—whether by direct killing or engineered starvation—and to hold Israeli leaders accountable, including through enforcement of International Criminal Court arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity
