First relief ship docks
Children in Gaza are at acute risk of starvation
March 16, 2024, 8:16 a.m
At the beginning of the month, the World Health Organization, among others, reported that children were starving to death in Gaza. Now UNICEF is also sounding the alarm. The crisis is worsening “shockingly quickly”. The ongoing food deliveries by ship are not enough, aid organizations warn.
According to the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF, 31 percent of children under two years of age in the northern Gaza Strip are acutely malnourished. In January it was 15.6 percent of children, the organization said. In this part of the Gaza Strip, the supply crisis is particularly dire due to the ongoing war between Israel and the Islamist Hamas.
Data collected by UNICEF and partners in northern Gaza in February showed that 4.5 percent of children in shelters and health centers suffered from severe acute malnutrition. This most severe form of malnutrition is life-threatening if children do not receive immediate therapeutic nutrition and medical attention. However, this is not available locally.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization and the UN emergency agency OCHA reported several cases of children starving to death in the north of the Gaza Strip. “The speed with which this catastrophic child hunger crisis in the Gaza Strip has developed is shocking, especially when urgently needed help is available just a few kilometers away,” said UNICEF head Catherine Russell, referring to the nearby border with Israel.
Hunger also in the south of the Gaza Strip
Most of the population of the northern and central Gaza Strip has fled to the south of the sealed-off coastal area at the insistence of the Israeli military. Several hundred thousand people remained behind in northern Gaza. Many have since returned since Israel intensified its attacks in the south of the area. Aid deliveries are only reaching the people in the northern Gaza Strip to a limited extent. According to the World Food Program, deliveries are hardly possible. Helpers were also hindered and convoys were looted. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing ahead with a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and restricting humanitarian aid despite ongoing ceasefire negotiations. Within the coastal area, military restrictions, hostilities and chaos following the dismantling of order maintained by Hamas make it difficult to transport goods.
But according to UNICEF, many children are also starving in other parts of the Gaza Strip. Data collected for the first time in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip showed that 28 percent of children under the age of two were acutely malnourished – ten percent of them were already suffering from severe wasting. Even in Rafah, the place with the best access to aid, the number of acutely malnourished children under two years old has doubled from five percent in January to ten percent at the end of February. The number of severely malnourished children quadrupled from one percent to more than four percent within a month.
The first aid shipment has now arrived in Gaza by sea. The ship “Open Arms” with a cargo of 200 tons of food has been anchored off the coast of the sealed-off coastal area since Friday, as the organization “World Central Kitchen” (WCK), which was involved in the mission, announced on X. Food and drinking water were brought to the shore from a floating platform that the “Open Arms” towed from Cyprus hundreds of kilometers across the sea to Gaza, according to the Israeli military, which is securing the landing site on the coast. 60 kitchens that WCK runs together with local partners are intended to prepare meals and distribute them to hungry people. Separately, the US is planning a maritime corridor to Gaza, for which the US military will build a floating dock near the Gaza coast.
Land deliveries are irreplaceable
However, aid organizations have been emphasizing for weeks that aid deliveries by sea and air alone cannot ensure supplies for the people in the Gaza Strip. All of the approximately 2.4 million inhabitants of the Palestinian territory are currently completely dependent on deliveries of food and other essential goods as well as medical assistance from outside. This corresponds to transporting thousands of tons every day.
According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, 31,490 Palestinians have died in the war so far and another 73,439 have suffered injuries. The numbers cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between armed fighters and civilians. At the same time, according to the authorities, these figures do not include a large number of people who are still suspected to be under rubble. The war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre carried out by Hamas and other terrorist groups on October 7th in Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip. These groups continue to hold over 100 Israelis hostage.