Gaza’s hunger crisis worsens, but it has not been declared a famine yet. The war-torn Palestinian enclave faces catastrophic shortages of food, water, and medicine, according to the British Red Cross and the World Health Organization. The World Food Programme, an arm of the United Nations, said Monday that hunger in Gaza has reached “astonishing levels,” with a third of the population of just over 2 million people currently going multiple days without eating. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called Gaza a “horror show” of devastation and starvation, marked by “a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times.”
The system for gauging hunger crises began in the 1980s, with Tim Hoffine, now deputy chief of party-innovation at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), now deputy chief of party-innovation at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). The IPC is an internationally-agreed upon system for measuring levels of hunger in different areas.
The IPC categorizes hunger on a five-phase scale, with Phase one meaning conditions are normal, Phase two, “crisis,” Phase four, “emergency,” and Phase five, which requires three criteria: at least 20% of households face “catastrophe,” at least 30% of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, and at least two of every 10,000 adults die each day from non-trauma causes.
FEWS NET places Gaza in phase four, with 925,000 Gazans (44%) already experiencing “emergency” acute food insecurity and 124,000 (12%) in “catastrophe” or experiencing famine as of May 2025. However, FEWS NET lacks an operational presence in Gaza, posing potential challenges to monitoring acute food insecurity.
In conflict zones, collecting reliable data, especially on non-trauma mortality, often proves difficult, making it difficult to declare a famine. Even if FEWS NET or the IPC determine that a location meets all three famine criteria, their findings must be reviewed and approved by a committee of independent experts convened by the IPC.
Starvation can occur long before famine is declared, as all three thresholds must be met to trigger a famine designation.
