Analysis: Declaration of Famine Lays Bare Israel's Human Rights Failures

The declaration on Friday of widespread famine in Gaza by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) should mark a turning point in the war.

- Peter Beaumont

The IPC, which represents a fastidious survey of available data, is regarded as the international gold standard in nutritional crises.

Long criticised by humanitarians in other emergencies for its overabundance of caution, the IPC's declaration of Level 5 – "catastrophic" hunger – in Gaza is a significant moment. Famine, under the IPC's exacting criteria, requires three critical thresholds to be passed: extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition and starvation-related deaths, all of which are now visible in Gaza.

A quarter of all Palestinians in Gaza are starving – more than 500,000 people – with that number expected to rise to more than 640,000 within six weeks. A mark of the IPC's thoroughness is that despite the very strong suspicion that famine conditions exist in the far north of Gaza, it has not declared famine there because of a shortage of available reliable data.

Inevitably, Israel has called foul, accusing the IPC of being manipulated by Hamas and claiming that it is providing sufficient food to Gaza. That lie, however, is challenged not just by the IPC's ruling but by the accumulation of all available evidence coming out of Gaza. Aid agencies large and small - including Médecins Sans Frontières' clinics - have been collecting their own data of growing levels of acute malnutrition.