A Year After Gaza’s Famine: Is the World Repeating Its Mistakes?

On August 22 of last year, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) officially confirmed that famine had taken hold of the Gaza Governorate, including Gaza City, determining that severe food insecurity conditions had already existed since mid-August 2025. More than half a million people faced starvation, destitution, and death. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher, addressing international media and the Security Council, called it “the Gaza Famine.” He warned that the famine could have been prevented, pointing to restrictions on humanitarian access and the devastating toll of Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023, describing it as a man-made crisis “openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war.” Famine conditions only began to ease following the October 10, 2025, ceasefire and improved humanitarian access, by which point roughly two months had passed. During that period, hundreds of Palestinians died from malnutrition, including at least 130 children, according to World Health Organization (WHO) figures released by September 5.

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.

The formal declaration of famine on August 22 was not an isolated event but the culmination of months of warnings that Gaza’s food system was collapsing. As Israel imposed severe restrictions on humanitarian operations, aid workers faced deadly consequences; seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike on April 1, 2024. While Israel later acknowledged operational errors, dismissed two officers, and reprimanded senior commanders, it declined to pursue a criminal investigation despite international condemnation, including from allies like the UK. By the time the IPC formally confirmed famine, over half a million people were already trapped in widespread starvation, destitution, and preventable deaths. Dozens of aid organizations, including UN agencies like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNICEF, the World Food Programme (WFP), and the WHO, had repeatedly warned of the accelerating hunger crisis, calling for immediate, safe, and unhindered access. The IPC itself warned in May 2025 that persistent barriers to humanitarian aid were making famine highly likely. The subsequent improvement in conditions highlights the direct impact of access: following the October ceasefire, food security and nutrition levels improved as humanitarian and commercial food deliveries increased. By December, the IPC reported that famine conditions had been offset, though more than 100,000 people still faced catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, and the overall situation remained critical. If famine could recede once access improved, the obvious question remains: why was it allowed to develop in the first place?

What the world is witnessing today 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 to make life in the enclave increasingly unbearable, aiming to encourage Palestinians to leave. When this effort failed to produce the mass departures Israel sought, the tactic of restricting food and essential supplies is now being deployed 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 Palestinian resistance groups to accept conditions they deem unacceptable or unfavorable. 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 key 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 it allowed to develop only a year ago? The difference may lie 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 still no genuine peace exists for the Palestinians.

If the question is whether the world has learned anything from Gaza’s famine, the answer is uncomfortable and far from straightforward.

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.

However, learning a lesson and acting on it are two different things. 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, is that the world has learned how to measure famine far 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, the question is no longer simply whether the world learned from last year’s famine. It is whether the international community is prepared to act on what it already knows and has tested.

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