In Gaza, Nealy Every Single Child is at Risk of Famine

GAZA (May 12, 2025)—The lives of the 1.1 million children in Gaza are urgently threatened by spiraling acute food insecurity as new data from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) found 93% of people are experiencing crisis-level acute food insecurity or worse. The IPC, the leading international authority measuring hunger crises, published a snapshot today that determined the Gaza Strip is “confronted with a critical risk of famine.”[1]

The war in Gaza and Israeli authorities' total siege on the entry of aid and goods have pushed families to take unimaginable measures to survive, says Save the Children. Without urgent action to end the siege and to allow food and medicine into Gaza, one million children are at risk of starvation, disease and ultimately, death.  

Save the Children staff members have received reports in recent days of families in northern Gaza resorting to desperate measures, including eating animal feed, expired flour and flour mixed with sand, out of desperation to survive.  

A 30-year-old father living in northern Gaza with his pregnant wife and two-year-old child, said:   “I don’t know how to feed my family. There’s no food. I have no choice but to eat things you would never imagine. It’s unfair. She’s weak [his daughter], constantly sick, and can’t get up. She has diarrhea. She’s in pain from hunger. My wife is going to lose our unborn child.

“It’s desperate here—chaos. We don’t know what awaits us. No one is living a dignified life. Why is this happening to us?”

A 25-year-old mother of four in northern Gaza whose children were receiving treatment for malnutrition at Save the Children’s healthcare clinic during the brief pause in fighting, said:  

“We know what hunger feels like—we’ve tasted death. Our children are just waiting their turn to die.” 

Nothing has been allowed to enter Gaza—no food, water, fuel, or medicine—since Israeli authorities imposed a total siege on March 2, 2025. Almost everyone in Gaza depends on humanitarian aid, but with supplies cut off, people have been pushed to desperate measures to survive, while trucks loaded with food sit rotting at the borders. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and community kitchens across the strip have run out of food and been forced to halt operations. 

Save the Children’s Regional Director for the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe, Ahmad Alhendawi, said:   

“This is a deliberate humanitarian catastrophe. Children are being starved by design, under Israeli authorities' total siege. We have the food, we have the aid and we know how to treat malnutrition in children—what we don’t have is access. There is food, water and medical aid ready to go, but it’s being blocked at the border while families are forced to eat animal feed and leaves, taking unimaginable and dehumanizing measures to survive. This is not a crisis of supply; it’s a crisis of access. At any given moment in Gaza, a child, someone’s whole world, could be killed by bombs and bullets, starvation and disease. The international community must act now to open the crossings and deliver life-saving aid. We cannot stand by while an entire population is starved in plain sight.” 

Starvation as a method of warfare is strictly prohibited under international law and is codified as a war crime. The denial of humanitarian assistance is also a violation of International Humanitarian Law.

Save the Children is running a primary health care center in Deir Al-Balah, providing essential services to children, mothers and families. The collapse of the pause on March 18 has made it extremely difficult for our staff to deliver nutrition services to children and families, despite the high levels of malnutrition among children under the age of five. During the month of April, we were only able to screen 574 children for acute malnutrition compared to more than 10,500 children in January during the pause. Of the children aged under two years who were screened in April, more than one in five were found to have moderate acute malnutrition or severe acute malnutrition, requiring urgent treatment.  

NOTES TO EDITORS

[1] GAZA STRIP: IPC Acute Food Insecurity and Acute Malnutrition Special Snapshot | April - September 2025. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) provides a common scale for classifying the severity and magnitude of food shortage and acute malnutrition. According to the IPC report released today (May 12, 2025), almost all (93%) of Gaza’s 2.1 million people are already enduring “crisis levels” of hunger (IPC Phase 3) or worse. Among them, almost a quarter of a million people are facing catastrophic, “famine-like conditions,” while nearly half the population is in a state of “emergency” hunger.