The head of Save the Children described in horrific detail Wednesday the slow agony of starving children in Gaza, saying they are so weak they do not cry.
Addressing a UN Security Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the president of the international charity, Inger Ashing, said famine — declared by the UN last week to be happening in Gaza — is not just a dry technical term.
“When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully. This, in simple terms, is what famine is,” said Ashing.
She went on to describe what happens when children die of hunger over the course of several weeks, as the body first consumes its own fat to survive and when that is gone, literally consumes itself as it eats muscles and vital organs.
“Yet our clinics are almost silent. Now, children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away,” said Ashing.
She said aid groups have been warning loudly that famine was coming as Israel prevented food and other essentials from entering Gaza over the course of two years of war triggered by the Hamas attack of October 2023.
“Everyone in this room has a legal and moral responsibility to act to stop this atrocity,” said Ashing.
The United Nations officially declared famine in Gaza on Friday, blaming what it called systematic obstruction of aid by Israel during more than 22 months of war.
A UN-backed hunger monitor called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) said famine was affecting 500,000 people in the Gaza governorate, which covers about a fifth of the Palestinian territory including Gaza City.
The IPC projected that the famine would expand to cover around two-thirds of Gaza by the end of September.
Israel on Wednesday demanded that the IPC retract the report, calling it “fabricated.”
After Wednesday’s Security Council meeting 14 members — all but the United States, Israel’s main ally — issued a joint declaration expressing “profound alarm and distress” over the declaration of famine and saying they trusted the IPC’s work and methodology.
“The use of starvation as a weapon of war is clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law. Famine in Gaza must be stopped immediately,” the declaration says.
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