Gaza - Over half a million are a 'step away from famine' : Colum Lynch / DEVEX and Isaac Chotiner / The New Yorker

Articles shared by Tom McDermott

UN OCHA warned the Security Council this week that at least a quarter of Gaza's population is "a step away from famine."

Click here for the article in DEVEX

Excerpt:

"The paper cited a chilling account of the struggles of delivering aid in a conflict zone, citing an increase in access denials by Israel since the beginning of January, as well as the collapse of security in northern Gaza.

“Out of the 28 planned aid missions between 1 January and 6 February to deliver food in the north, seven were facilitated, one partially facilitated, eight impeded, five postponed and seven denied,” the paper stated. Between Feb. 18 and 19, the World Food Programme “deployed successive, 10-truck convoys to northern Gaza as part of an effort to deliver essential food assistance.”

“Facing explosive anger, violence and a breakdown of law and order, the deliveries were paused after two days due to the inability to ensure safety and security for those distributing and receiving the assistance,” it said.


See also:
Gaza is Starving in the New Yorker - interview with Arif Hussain, Chief Economist at WFP

"...eighty per cent of the people, or four out of five people, in famine or a catastrophic type of hunger are in Gaza right now. This is also what makes it unprecedented."


"I’ve been doing this for the past two decades, and I’ve been to all kinds of conflicts and all kinds of crises. And, for me, this is unprecedented because of, one, the magnitude, the scale, the entire population of a particular place; second, the severity; and, third, the speed at which this is happening, at which this has unfolded, is unprecedented. In my life, I’ve never seen anything like this in terms of severity, in terms of scale, and then in terms of speed."