31/07 • GLOBAL FAMINE

In late July 2025, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) warned that Gaza is on the brink of a worst-case famine. Indicators have met two of the three thresholds which include acute food insecurity (when a person’s inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in immediate danger) and child malnutrition rates over 30 percent.

The IPC system classifies food insecurity from Phase 1 (Minimal) to Phase 5 (Catastrophe/Famine). A famine (Phase 5) is declared when at least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition exceeds 30 percent, and death rates are critically high.

While a formal famine declaration in Gaza is pending, hunger-related mortality continues to rise and aid delivery remains dramatically short of the needs on the ground.

This emphasises the Global Report on Food Crises 2025 which paints a chilling global picture: 295 million people across 53 countries faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2024, triple the number in 2016 and double since 2020. The number in the Catastrophe/Famine category has more than doubled, affecting populations in Sudan, South Sudan, Gaza, Haiti, and Mali.

Famine was confirmed for the first time since 2020 in North Darfur (Sudan) in mid-2024, and now nearly half a million Gazans face the same confirmation unless current aid restrictions and displacement trends change now.

Much has shifted in the humanitarian landscape since 2024. This includes significant reductions in humanitarian funding, increasing access constraints due to conflict and political instability, worsening displacement figures, and a sharp rise in climate-related emergencies affecting food systems.

Perhaps most disturbing is that starvation is becoming a calculated tool of war. In Gaza, restricted aid corridors and intermittently distributed food packets may prevent mass death, but they are sufficient to destroy social cohesion and cause generational trauma and loss of dignity. Some analysts call this “genocidal humanitarianism” or "genocidal camouflage".

These threats are also being flagged in South Sudan, where increasing “conflict and civil insecurity” is causing a progressive drift towards famine across urban and rural communities.

As international attention narrows on Gaza's food crisis, countries like South Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, the Sahel and the DRC remain on an equally fragile tipping point. Conflict, climate extremes, displacement and economic turmoil are pushing communities around the world into survival mode. 

Food isn’t just about survival, it’s about dignity.