Famine confirmed in Gaza – pregnant women and newborns at acute risk

GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestinian Territory – “Where is the world watching what’s happening to us, and to our children? All families in the world have children,” said Inas, who lives in a displacement camp with her three children in Gaza city – where famine has been confirmed for the first time. 

“Would they accept their children waking up hungry?”

More than half a million people in Gaza are at risk of starvation, according to a new Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations agency for children (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Food Programme (WFP).

After two years of war, repeated displacement and severe restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid, famine has been declared in the Gaza Governorate, with the catastrophic conditions projected to spread to Deir Al Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks. Famine (IPC Phase 5) is triggered when three critical thresholds have been breached: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation-related deaths.

“For mothers in Gaza, it means being forced to give birth while malnourished, exhausted and at heightened risk of death,” said UNFPA in a statement. “It means their babies are born too small, too weak or too early to survive. It means mothers unable to breastfeed because they, too, are starving.”

People are already dying of malnutrition in Gaza. By the end of September, over 640,000 are likely to face famine across the Gaza Strip, with a further 1.14 million people – more than 50 per cent of the population of Gaza – expected to face emergency (IPC Phase 4) conditions. 

Women and girls hit hardest

Inas’ youngest child is just a few months old.  She tries her best to create a home for her family despite the lack of basic supplies, cleaning the area around her tent with her bare hands and often using sand to wash the cookware.

“I am now living in a tent [...] the situation was extremely difficult as a pregnant woman,” she told UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. 

“My children and I are also suffering from food shortages, especially my newborn. Sometimes I give my share of the food to my children so they won’t feel hungry, which affects both my health and that of my baby. I often feel like I’m going to faint.”

In times of food insecurity, mothers all too often eat last and least. Since the fragile ceasefire collapsed in March 2025, Israel has severely limited distributions of food and other aid; and with most aid distribution sites located in Rafah and central Gaza and controlled by Israel, undernourished and displaced Palestinians are forced to undertake a gruelling six-hour roundtrip to feed their families. 

Many don’t make it back with anything, including their lives. 

At least 1,880 people have been killed and more than 4,000 injured while seeking food. Airdrops of supplies are also inadequate and dangerous, with aid failing to reach the most vulnerable and often leading to injury or even death as desperate people try to locate and access it.

“Every day we see people going to the aid distribution points, walking straight to death, just to bring bread back for their children,” said Inas. “We see pictures of young men carrying flour bags stained with blood.”

Many women, children and other vulnerable people, including the elderly, are forced to rely on family members to try and bring back rations, putting them at increased risk of malnutrition and starvation. An estimated 55,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza are expected to be at severe risk of death from malnutrition by mid-2026 – three times the already alarming 17,000 in May 2025 – and one in five babies is now born prematurely or underweight.

An avoidable crisis

More than 62,000 people, including an estimated 28,000 women and girls, have reportedly been killed in Gaza since October 2023. On Friday, UN agencies called for an immediate ceasefire and unhindered access to humanitarian aid to prevent further deaths, emphasizing that famine must be stopped at all costs. The IPC analysis notes: “Any further delay – even by days – will result in a totally unacceptable escalation of famine-related mortality.”

Between 2 March and 19 May 2025, Israel denied all food from entering the Gaza Strip; between May and July, the amount of food entering was insufficient to feed Gaza’s population of over 2 million. Destruction of homes and infrastructure, repeated displacement and prolonged food insecurity have left most households with barely any means of coping or recovering.

Inas explained how she and her family found the will to survive. “Every day we wake up with hope that maybe tomorrow there will be a solution. That things will get better,” she said.

“But sadly, things are only getting worse. We know we’re in a war. But is it the fault of our children? The most basic right is the right to food.”

Since July, UNFPA has delivered essential medicines and supplies during the ceasefire, and prepared them for distribution to health facilities that remain operational across Gaza, although at a scale that falls far short of needs. 

The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, said, “[This] is a famine that we could have prevented, if we had been allowed […] It is a famine that hits the most vulnerable first. Each with a name, each with a story. That strips people of dignity before it strips them of life. That forces a parent to choose which child to feed.”

“No woman should be forced to give birth in famine conditions. No child should begin life starving,” UNFPA’s statement says. “Every day of inaction condemns more mothers and newborns to suffering. The suffering, the starving, must end now.”