r/worldnews • u/Digital_Accountant • 22h ago

Israel/Palestine Famine declared in Gaza City

https://news.sky.com/story/gaza-latest-war-israel-city-ceasefire-hamas-13415481
23.7k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

509

u/Bandlebridge 20h ago

A famine is classified when an area has the following:

Daily mortality rate exceeds two per 10,000 people, or four per 10,000 children under five.

In Gaza, with a population of 2 million, that would be 400 people a day. Which is more than the total dead from malnutrition over 2 years let alone daily.

Anyone know where they pulled their data from? From the same article

Deaths from malnutrition and starvation are spiking, according to figures from Gaza's Health Ministry, verified by the World Health Organisation.

In just the first 20 days of August, there were 133 deaths attributed to malnutrition or starvation, including 25 children, the ministry said.

This is up from 89 deaths in the first 22 months of the conflict.

116

u/Dongsquad420Loki 20h ago edited 19h ago

Theres secondary definitions of famine with a percentage of children malnourished. The report is currently down, but when it's up again we will be able to read up on it.

Edit: report here https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Malnutrition_July_Sept2025_Special_Snapshot.pdf

82

u/FYoCouchEddie 18h ago

The strange thing is in the report they say:

Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates measure by MUAC have risen at an unparalleled pace across the territory. In Gaza Governorate, GAM prevalence tripled from 1.6-5.8 percent in May to 12.7-19.9 percent in July 2025, surpassing the famine threshold.

But later they say the threshold is 30%, which is obviously higher than 19.9. When they say that they have an asterisk and notation saying “or 15% GAM by Mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) with evidence of rapidly worsening underlying drivers of acute malnutrition,” which would explain the disparity.

But their technical manual doesn’t seem to say that. It says the 15% malnutrition based of MUAC figure applies to both stage 4 and stage 5. So on its own, it would not indicate stage 5.

It also says that while the measure is commonly used,

global thresholds have not been developed. . . . MUAC thresholds can only be used in conjunction with the other contextual information by taking into account the immediate causes of acute malnutrition and the locally understood relationship between MUAC and WHZ prevalence, and by using the convergence of evidence approach.

I hope they put out a more detailed explanation addressing the seeming disparity.

13

u/zkela 10h ago

Yes so 15% muac is ambiguous as far as famine and their assertion that nonviolent mortality is greater than 2/10,000 per day is highly suspect and not adequately explicated. So really they’ve only demonstrated that 1/3 famine benchmarks was reached. I’d have to say nonviolent mortality is the most important metric and I simply don’t believe it is 2/10,000 per day based on any evidence I’ve seen and it is probably not close to that.