Why it took months for the world to declare ‘likely’ famine in Gaza
Given the bombing, displacement and blockade, a more relevant question may be how a major famine was averted. Part of the answer surely lies in Gaza’s human and social capital
In late 2023, less than three months into the war in Gaza, the World Food Programme was already warning that nobody there was “safe from starvation”. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which is widely recognised as the global hunger monitor, kept a close eye on the situation and issued repeated warnings. The full blockade that lasted from 2 March to 19 May 2025, when virtually no food was allowed in, and the limited supplies of food aid allowed afterwards, brought conditions to another level. As the crisis reached a peak, looting surged and the combination of blockade, forced displacement and indiscriminate bombardment made life intolerable.
Meanwhile, for fear of being accused of crying wolf, the IPC played a cautious game when it came to determining whether the conditions for a famine had been reached.
The IPC requires that the following conditions be present:
- At least one household in five must be facing an extreme lack of food and other basic needs;
- Three or more children in 10 must be suffering from acute malnutrition;
- Two people or four children for every 10,000 must die daily from outright starvation or from the interaction of malnutrition and disease.
On 22 August 2025, the IPC finally declared a “likely” famine in part of Gaza. Establishing whether its criteria applied in war-torn Gaza was not straightforward. Because it couldn’t directly identify any of the three conditions, it declared famine only “with reasonable evidence”.
This raises serious questions. Are the IPC’s criteria fit for purpose? And if not, are there better criteria which would have led to an earlier declaration?
To an economist, the IPC’s decision not to rely on movements in food prices is puzzling. In theory, famines can happen without increases in the price of food; but it is rare. The increase need not be stratospheric; in early modern Europe, most famines were associated with the equivalent of a doubling (or less) in the price of wheat or rye for a year.
During the spring and summer of 2025 the price of flour rocketed in Gaza, briefly reaching nearly 60 times its pre-invasion norm, and for three months it was 20 times the norm. Had an increase in the price of food been included in the IPC’s conditions, action could have been taken much sooner. As Israeli economist Yannay Spitzer warned in Ha’aretz on 27 July, the rises recorded are virtually unique in the history of famines.
At the height of the crisis, the US-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) played a controversial role. At the outset its distribution points were linked to horrific instances of bloodshed, reflecting both the brutality of the Israeli army and the risks people were prepared to take in search of food. Though the GHF was never transparent about how much food it distributed, it played a significant role. On one hand, its actions under duress can only have alleviated the desperate situation; on the other, UN data suggest about 1,000 people were killed around these distribution sites.
By the time the IPC declared famine in Gaza, the very worst was already over. In late July, flour prices had fallen significantly due to a sharp increase in the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. They remained high, however, as multiples of their pre-invasion levels.
Famines are killing events. The deaths they cause are controversial because they are easily translated into measures of culpability. People died of starvation in Gaza, but how many? In December 2024, the number of deaths attributed to famine or malnutrition since the invasion was still small: 32. A cumulative figure of 86 for deaths from starvation and malnutrition was released on July 20th, 2025. A daily record of famine deaths is available thereafter. More than half occurred between July 20th and the end of August, which converts to an annualised rate of 1 per 1,000 population during those weeks. That is far short of the IPC’s mortality criterion, which translates into an annual 73 per 1,000 population. Still, the recorded starvation deaths mean that there was a famine, short-lived but nevertheless real.
By the end of August there were signs that the worst was over. On the second anniversary of the savagery by Hamas that provoked the Israeli invasion, the cumulative total deaths from starvation stuck at 463. Thereafter conditions on the ground improved. On 19 December, the IPC declared the famine in Gaza over.
Physician Dominic Corrigan famously stated at the outset of the Great Irish Famine that “if there be no famine, there will be no fever”. By fever, Corrigan meant potentially lethal infectious diseases and, as it turned out, such diseases, not literal starvation, were responsible for most of the deaths attributable to the Irish Famine. And that has been the predominant pattern for famines throughout history. Historically the main killer during famines is not literal starvation, but famine-related diseases.
The war in Gaza created an ideal environment for infectious diseases to flourish in, and as revealed in UNRWA’s weekly Situation Reports, it led to huge increases in the incidence of scabies, chickenpox, hepatitis A, upper respiratory infections, and diarrheal diseases. But, crucially, none of the lethal adjuncts of famine such as typhus, tick-borne relapsing fever, polio, cholera, malaria, and typhoid fever – all associated with deteriorating sanitary conditions – made an appearance in UNRWA’s invaluable reports. Why? The most likely answer is that Gaza before the invasion, though very poor in material terms, was rich in human capital relative to textbook underdeveloped economies.
If this tentative finding that infectious diseases caused relatively few deaths at the height of the famine in Gaza is confirmed as more detailed information becomes available, that would be a remarkable outcome.
By what definition was there a famine in Gaza? According to the strict criteria laid down by the IPC, there was not. But the price data and the data on starvation deaths support the case for a famine. A more interesting question is why there wasn’t a major famine in Gaza, given the protracted bombardment, displacement, and blockade forced on the civilian population. It is too soon for a definitive answer, but part of the answer surely lies in Gaza’s human and social capital and the resilience of its people.
| Themes |
| • Displaced • ESC rights • Farmers/Peasants • Food (rights, sovereignty, crisis) • International • Local • Research • UN system |
