24 August 2025
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) issues this urgent statement following the publication of the IPC Famine Review Committee’s report of August 2025, which officially confirms that famine conditions (IPC Phase 5) are now present in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli Occupation’s nearly two-year long genocidal war. According to the IPC, more than half a million Palestinians are currently facing catastrophic hunger, and this figure is projected to rise to over 640,000 people in the coming weeks if the Israeli siege and destruction continue. The IPC further reports that famine is not limited to Gaza City but is expanding southward, threatening the entire population with starvation and death.
The IPC documents that more than thirty percent of children under five in Gaza suffer from acute malnutrition, and that mortality rates have surpassed famine thresholds. In July alone, over twelve thousand children were identified as acutely malnourished, marking the deadliest and hungriest month recorded since the beginning of this genocide. The IPC warns that without a fundamental shift in conditions – including access to food, medicine, water, and healthcare – the famine crisis will escalate to levels of mass death unprecedented in the region. The report makes clear that the Israeli Occupation has demolished Gaza’s food systems: croplands and production capacity are destroyed, and the population is entirely dependent on external aid, which remains grossly insufficient and erratic due to restrictions by the Israeli Occupation.
This famine is the direct result of the Israeli Occupation’s systematic targeting and destruction of Gaza’s food systems and its deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid. From the very beginning of its genocidal war, the Israeli Occupation has weaponized starvation as a tool of extermination and domination against the Palestinian people. The IPC’s findings confirm that famine in Gaza is human-made, engineered, and manufactured through Israeli siege, bombardment, and the intentional denial of the essentials of life.
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees stresses that this famine constitutes an act of genocide by starvation. The Israeli Occupation is deliberately using hunger as a weapon to annihilate Palestinian life in Gaza, in violation of international law and basic human morality. The IPC report confirms what Palestinians have been saying since the start of this assault: starvation has been imposed as a calculated strategy of war.
UAWC calls on the international community to recognize and act upon the reality that famine in Gaza is not inevitable but imposed. It is entirely preventable, yet it continues because the Israeli Occupation has been allowed to pursue a genocidal policy with impunity. The world must demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the complete lifting of the blockade, and unfettered humanitarian access to Gaza. Anything less is complicity in genocide by starvation.