Review of Famine Reports shows no famine in Gaza
Karim Kahn KC, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), relied on implausible reports based on incomplete information suggesting famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, when he applied for arrest warrants against the Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister.
UKLFI Charitable Trust has today published a detailed review of a series of reports assessing whether there has been a state of famine in Gaza during the current war. The conclusion is, happily, that there has been and is no famine in Gaza.
The review explains that famine has been defined by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) developed in 2004 for use in Somalia. In this context, the term famine is a scientific classification based on standards, evidence, and technical consensus, not a rhetorical or emotive term.
For a Famine classification (Phase 5), "an area needs to have extreme critical levels of acute malnutrition and mortality".[1] The Crude Death Rate must be greater than 2 per 10,000 per day for the situation in an area to be classified as a Famine.[2] For this purpose traumatic deaths (eg from weapons) are excluded.
For the situation in the whole of the Gaza Strip, with a population of 2.3 million, to be classified as a famine, at least 460 people would need to be dying of starvation every day from non-traumatic causes. For the situation in the northern part of the Gaza Strip to be classified as a famine in March or April of this year, when the population in this area was about 300,000, then at least 60 people would need to be dying in that area from non-traumatic causes.
However, on 15 March 2024, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ("OCHA") stated that a total of 31 people, including 27 children, had died from malnutrition and dehydration in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war on 7 October 2023.[3]
This is clearly well below the figure required to constitute a famine. Despite this, the UN World Food Programme ("WFP") relied on this report when it stated on 3 May 2024 that there was a "full-blown famine" in northern Gaza.[4]
There was also the issue that many of those who were said to have died of starvation also had underlying illnesses.
Another problem with two or the reports was that they had calculated the food delivered into the Gaza Strip, but failed to include supplies by the private sector, despite this constituting a large part of the food supply in the North of the Strip during the reporting period.[5]
An Israeli report showed that the number of calories of food delivered between January and April 2024 constituted a mean of 3268 calories per person per day.[6] This is over 50% more calories than required by the Sphere guidelines for humanitarian food to conflict-affected populations, which set out a daily requirement of 2,100 calories per person.[7]
One of the Famine Reports had claimed that between 8 October 2023 and 9 March 2024 the number of food trucks into Gaza per day had decreased from an average of 150 trucks per day to an average of 65 trucks.[8] However, the actual pre-war number of food trucks was about 75, not 150, as claimed in the report.[9]
Moreover, according to the Israeli Ministry for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories ("COGAT"), the number of food trucks actually increased significantly between November 2023 (average of 45 trucks per day) to March 2024 (average of 139 trucks per day).[10]
Jonathan Turner, Executive Director of UKLFI Charitable Trust, commented: "For hundreds of years, false allegations against Jews have promoted antisemitism and persecution. We now see the Jewish State and its leaders being charged with crimes of genocide and using starvation as a method of warfare, on the basis of reports whose egregious errors have been clearly exposed."
[1] https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/manual/IPC_Technical_Manual_3_Final.pdf, p. 37.
[2] https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/manual/IPC_Technical_Manual_3_Final.pdf, p. 35.
[3] https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/Gaza_casualties_info-graphic_15_March_2024.pdf.
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-study-finds-food-supply-to-gaza-more-than-sufficient-for-populations-needs/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20paper%2C%20the,in%20April%20to%204%2C580%20kcal.
[5] https://www.gov.il/en/pages/transparency-and-methodology-issues-in-the-ipc-special-brief-of-18-march-2024.
[6] https://biochem-food-nutrition.agri.huji.ac.il/arontroen/publications/nutritional-assessment-of-food-aid-delivered-to-gaza.
[7] https://biochem-food-nutrition.agri.huji.ac.il/arontroen/publications/nutritional-assessment-of-food-aid-delivered-to-gaza, p. 15.
[8]https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Feb_July2024_Special_Brief.pdf, p. 8.
[9] https://www.camera.org/article/cnn-article-errs-and-misleads-on-gaza-humanitarian-aid/
[10] https://www.gov.il/en/pages/transparency-and-methodology-issues-in-the-ipc-special-brief-of-18-march-2024; https://x.com/cogatonline/status/1785647121015726186.
No comments:
Post a Comment