Despite international pleas and condemnations, Israel continues to restrict food imports and distribution.
(Washington, D.C., August 22, 2025) —The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a consortium of UN and international health organizations, concluded today that the Gaza Governorate of the Gaza Strip is currently experiencing Phase 5 famine, the highest phase of the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Scale. The IPC projected that famine would expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis within weeks.
"The international community has an urgent legal and moral duty to stop Israel's deliberate starvation of Palestinians, which has now officially created a famine in Gaza," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. "While the world dithers, Israel is making plans to slaughter or displace those Palestinians still managing to stay alive."
According to the IPC, a Phase 5 famine classification exists "when an area has at least 20% of households facing an extreme lack of food, at least 30% of children suffering from acute malnutrition, and two people for every 10,000 dying each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease."
In July 2025, DAWN urged the UN Secretary General to secure an official declaration of famine in Gaza by U.N. agencies in light of the escalating death of Palestinians due to hunger caused by Israel's deliberate starvation policy.
"Famine in Gaza is not inevitable — it is the result of deliberate obstruction of life-saving aid," said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN. "States must force Israel to allow immediate, large-scale, and unhindered humanitarian assistance into Gaza now, and restore commercial flows, markets, essential services, and local food production at scale to stop the mass starvation and death unfolding before our eyes."
In 2024, the International Criminal Court charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with the war crime of using starvation as a weapon of war, among other violations of the Rome Statute, and issued arrest warrants against them. The prosecutor found that Netanyahu and other Israeli officials intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of essentials for survival, such as food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity, between October 8, 2023, and May 20, 2024.
"It has been nearly two years since the Israeli defense minister openly announced Israel's intention to starve the people of Gaza," said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Israel-Palestine director at DAWN. "The international community has stood by and passively watched as Israel starves an entire population in slow motion."
