Save the Children’s head painted a grim picture of Gaza, where she said starving children are so debilitated they can no longer cry.
Addressing a Security Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Wednesday, the president of the international charity, Inger Ashing, said famine – declared by the U.N. 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 insisted that 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, slamming Israel for the systematic obstruction of aid during more than 22 months of attacks.
A U.N.-backed hunger monitor called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative 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 by the end of September to cover around two-thirds of Gaza.
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