STORY: :: The United Nations aid chief says the ’21st century famine’ in Gaza should be ‘a moment of collective shame’
:: August 22, 2025
:: Geneva, Switzerland
:: Tom Fletcher, U.N. Emergency Coordinator
“Be in no doubt that this is irrefutable testimony – it is a famine, the Gaza famine. It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. Yet, food stacks up at the borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.”
“It is a famine in 2025, a 21st century famine, watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. It is a famine on all of our watch. Everyone owns this, the Gaza famine is the world’s famine. It is a famine that asks, ‘But what did you do?’ – a famine that will and must haunt us all.”
“This is a moment of collective shame, and I think we all feel that in different ways. We all have to look back as the international community and think where could we have got this in a different place. And we’ve watched it happen in real time.”
The hunger crisis in Gaza is at a tipping point, with critically low supplies of fortified milk and special nutritious pastes exacerbating food shortages and pushing greater numbers of children into starvation, according to aid agencies, malnutrition experts and the U.N.
Almost two years since Israel’s invasion, famine was formally confirmed for the first time in parts of Gaza on Friday with almost a quarter of the population facing starvation, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the main global hunger monitor working with the U.N. and other aid agencies.
“Let us get food and other supplies in unimpeded and at the massive scale required. End the retribution,” he added in comments directed at Netanyahu.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza, responding to a report on Friday from a global hunger monitor that said famine had struck an area of Gaza and would likely spread over the next month.
