There are moments in international affairs when statistics stop behaving like abstractions and begin to smell of reality. Gaza has reached that moment. According to the United Nations’ Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, more than 500,000 people in Gaza are already trapped in famine conditions, classified as the most extreme level of food insecurity. This is not a warning; it is a diagnosis. The number has continued to climb through 2025, with UN agencies confirming that the entire population of 2.1 million faces crisis-level hunger or worse. Famine has returned to the international vocabulary not because food is absent, but because access has been deliberately obstructed.

The figures are stark. UNICEF reports that acute malnutrition among children in Gaza City has quadrupled since February 2025, while more than one in three residents now go days without eating. The World Health Organization has confirmed deaths from dehydration and starvation, including infants whose bodies simply ran out of reserves. By mid-2025, more than 640,000 people were assessed as facing catastrophic food insecurity, with another million in emergency conditions. These figures place Gaza among the worst hunger crises recorded globally this decade, alongside Sudan and Yemen, yet Gaza stands apart for one reason: the famine is entirely man-made.

Humanitarian agencies are unusually blunt about this. UN officials have repeatedly stated that food exists in the region, warehouses are stocked, and supply chains are functional up to Gaza’s borders. What fails is permission—aid trucks queue while paperwork piles up. Relief organisations lose licences. Fishing boats remain idle. Agricultural land lies destroyed. In this context, hunger has become a tool rather than a byproduct of war. The World Food Programme’s executive director, Cindy McCain, warned that waiting for full famine confirmation before acting would mean “counting bodies instead of preventing deaths”. That warning has gone largely unheeded.

This catastrophe is not only humanitarian. It is........

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