UN reports 200,000 Gaza children at risk of famine

Sahar al-Bardini cooks rice and lentils over an open flame in a canvas tent at al-Zawaida camp in central Gaza. The 35-year-old widow sets the single daily meal in front of her three children—Omar, six, Sama, four, and Mahmoud, three—while already fretting about tomorrow’s plate. With her husband killed in northern Gaza shelling three years ago, she is the only earner for six people, and even the cheapest food now costs more than she can scrape together after Israel’s blockade kept prices high for years.

Last year’s famine, which ran from August to December, left Omar and Sama visibly thinner and weaker. Eggs and vegetables vanished from the markets or priced themselves beyond reach, so the family survived on whatever scraps they could find. Six months after the emergency eased, Omar and Sama are still regaining weight; their bodies still show the scars of months without enough protein or vitamins. Sahar now gives them one meal a day, but the fear of sliding back into hunger never leaves her.

The United Nations says the risk is rising again. Last week the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that 67 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people now face food insecurity. More than 200,000—about one in ten—are already living in conditions that usually precede an official famine declaration, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. In central Gaza, makeshift kitchens run by aid groups dish out rice and basic pulses once or twice a day. The meals keep stomachs from growling, but they lack the eggs, vegetables, fruit and meat that growing children need to rebuild strength. “The rice fills them up,” Sahar said. “But it does not give them what their bodies must have to grow.”

With little cash and no husband’s income, she stretches every food voucher and aid package as far as it will go, shuffling priorities between food, clothes, medicine and school supplies. Omar is still smaller than other children his age, and Sama’s energy dips toward evening. “I want to see them healthy again,” Sahar said, “but the food they need is not something I can provide every day.”