Gaza no longer has famine, says global hunger monitor

FE Team | Published: December 19, 2025 21:41:04

GENEVA, Dec 19 (Agencies): There is no longer famine in Gaza, a global hunger monitor said on Friday, after access for humanitarian and commercial food deliveries improved following a fragile October 10 ceasefire in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas.
The latest assessment by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification comes four months after it said 514,000 people - nearly a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza - were experiencing famine. It warned on Friday that the situation in the enclave remained critical.
"Under a worst-case scenario, which would include renewed hostilities and a halt in humanitarian and commercial inflows, the entire Gaza Strip is at risk of famine through mid-April 2026. This underscores the severe and ongoing humanitarian crisis," the IPC said in the report.
Israel controls all access to Gaza. COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, in August disputed that there was famine in Gaza. COGAT says 600-800 trucks have entered Gaza daily since the start of the truce in October and that food made up 70 per cent of all those supplies.
Hamas disputes those figures, saying far fewer than 600 trucks a day have made it into Gaza. Aid agencies have repeatedly said far more aid needs to get into Gaza and have said Israel is blocking needed items from entering, which Israel denies.
The IPC said five famines have been confirmed in the past 15 years: in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, Sudan in 2024, and most recently in Gaza in August.
For a region to be classified as in famine at least 20 per cent of people must be suffering extreme food shortages, with one in three children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or malnutrition and disease.
Meanwhile, More than 1,000 patients have died while waiting for urgent medical evacuation from war-ravaged Gaza in the last year and a half, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that the UN agency and its partners had "evacuated over 10,600 patients from Gaza with severe health conditions, including over 5,600 children" since the start of the war more than two years ago.
But he warned that "many more patients remain in Gaza awaiting evacuation to receive appropriate healthcare".
Citing numbers from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, Tedros said that 1,092 patients were known to have died while awaiting medical evacuation just between July 2024 and November 28, 2025.