Gaza’s famine one year on: Did the world learn anything?

On 22nd August last year, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) officially confirmed famine in Gaza Governorate, including Gaza City, after determining that famine conditions had already existed by mid-August 2025. More than half a million people were facing starvation, destitution and death. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, speaking to international media and later to the Security Council, called it “the Gaza Famine.” He warned that it could have been prevented, pointing to the restrictions on humanitarian access and the devastating consequences of Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023—it is a manmade famine and it is “openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war” Fletcher emphasised . By the time famine conditions had somewhat receded following the 10th October 2025 ceasefire and improved humanitarian access, roughly two months had passed. In that period, hundreds of Palestinians had died from malnutrition, including at least 130 children, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) figures by 5th September.

It should be pointed out that famine did not suddenly appear on 22nd August. The IPC assessment was the culmination of months of warnings that Gaza’s food system was collapsing. As Israel made it increasingly difficult for aid organisations to operate in Gaza, even aid workers were killed, including the seven World Central Kitchen workers killed in an Israeli strike on 1st April 2024. Israel later acknowledged operational errors in the attack, dismissed two officers and reprimanded senior commanders, but did not pursue a criminal investigation into the killings despite condemnation from its allies including UK. By the time famine was formally confirmed, more than half a million people were already trapped in conditions of widespread starvation, destitution and preventable deaths. Dozens of aid organizations, including UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the WHO, had already been warning repeatedly of the accelerating hunger crisis and calling for immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian access. The IPC itself had warned in May, 2025, that the persistent inability of humanitarian agencies to reach people in dire need was making famine increasingly likely. The subsequent improvement is itself revealing: following the October ceasefire, food security and nutrition conditions improved as access for humanitarian and commercial food deliveries increased. By December, the IPC reported that famine conditions had been offset, although more than 100,000 people were still facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity and the overall situation remained critical. If famine could recede when access improved, the obvious question is why it was allowed to develop in the first place.

The bottom line is that, even today, while no widespread famine is being reported, many Palestinians in Gaza still face severe food insecurity, with families struggling to secure enough food and many people forced to search for food day after day.

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What the world is watching now is potentially a repetition of that same deadly dynamic, but with a different political objective. In 2025, amid an openly declared Israeli policy of forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza altogether, restrictions on food and other essential supplies became part of a broader strategy that was presented as a means of making life in the enclave increasingly unbearable and encouraging Palestinians to leave. When that effort failed to produce the mass departures from Gaza that Israel had sought, the same tactic of restricting food and essential supplies is now being deployed, but toward a different objective within the current context. As Israel negotiates with Hamas, through mediators, restrictions on food and other necessities can serve as leverage to pressure the Palestinian resistance groups to accept conditions they regard as unacceptable or unfavourable. This was not merely an inference: in April 2025, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz openly described the blockade as a “pressure lever” against Hamas. Today, with negotiations revolving around issues including Hamas’s disarmament and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza—a condition of the ceasefire that was supposed to have been implemented by now—the use of food and humanitarian access as leverage raises a disturbing question: has the world learned anything from the famine that it allowed to develop only a year ago? The difference may be in the stated objective—then, the policy was implemented amid Israel’s devastating military campaign; now, food and aid restrictions risk becoming another means of forcing Hamas to accept political terms while there is still no genuine peace for the Palestinians.

If the question is whether the world learned anything from Gaza’s famine, the answer is uncomfortable but not straight no.

It learned that famine can be reversed when food and humanitarian supplies are allowed to enter, that the international community possesses the mechanisms to identify famine before it becomes irreversible, and that warnings are remarkably precise.

But learning a lesson and acting on it are not the same thing. The famine was declared only after months of warnings, and it receded only after the conditions that had helped produce it were changed. Yet the underlying vulnerability remains. Gaza’s food system has been devastated, its agricultural capacity severely reduced, its population overwhelmingly dependent on humanitarian assistance, and access to food remains subject to political and military decisions beyond the control of those who need it most.

The more disturbing lesson, therefore, may be that the world has learned how to measure famine better than it has learned how to prevent it.

The international system documented the hunger, issued warnings, declared famine and eventually recorded its retreat. But documentation is not protection. A population should not have to reach the point of starvation before the world can compel those controlling access to food to open the gates.

If restrictions on food and humanitarian supplies can once again be used as leverage while negotiations determine the future of Gaza, then the question is no longer simply whether the world learned from last year’s famine. It is whether it is prepared to act on what it already knows and have tested.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.