Global Hunger Monitor Confirms No Famine in Gaza as Israel Touts Increase in Delivered Aid

Latest Developments

IPC Acknowledges No Famine in Gaza: The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global consortium that assesses food insecurity, assessed on December 19 that there was no famine in Gaza following a boost in humanitarian aid in the wake of the October 10 ceasefire. The IPC had announced on August 22 its determination that the Gaza Governate region of the enclave was experiencing famine, with the report citing “reasonable evidence,” but not “solid evidence,” for the finding. At the time, the Israeli Foreign Ministry categorically rejected the claims made by the IPC, calling the data “tailor-made to fit Hamas’s fake campaign.”
Report Assesses Acute Food Insecurity Still Prevails in Gaza: Despite its reclassification of the situation, the IPC warned that “under a worst-case scenario, which would include renewed hostilities and a halt in humanitarian aid and commercial inflows, the entire Gaza Strip (would be) at risk of famine through mid-April 2026.” The report noted that over 100,000 people in Gaza were still experiencing “catastrophic conditions,” but that at current rates, this figure would decrease to around 1,900 by April 2026.
Israel Publishes Aid Delivery Statistics, Rebuking IPC Claims: Israel’s unit for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) disputed the IPC’s assertion that acute food insecurity was still widespread in Gaza. “COGAT strongly rejects the claims and conclusions presented in the IPC report published today, which once again portrays a distorted, biased, and unfounded picture of the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip,” the unit stated, adding “the report relies on severe gaps in data collection and on sources that do not reflect the full scope of humanitarian assistance.” COGAT said that between 600 and 800 humanitarian aid trucks had entered the Gaza Strip every day since late October, 70 percent of which carried food deliveries, and that “in this context, nearly 30,000 food trucks carrying more than 500,000 tons of food entered the Gaza Strip throughout the ceasefire period.”

FDD Expert Response

“This is not news because conditions in Gaza never met the IPC’s own detailed definition of famine. Rather, the organization bent its own rules to the breaking point to conclude in August that a famine was in progress. The IPC’s own report even acknowledged that the most important of its three statistical thresholds for classifying famine — the number of deaths per 100,000 of the population — had been determined in the case of Gaza by inference rather than concrete evidence. There is hunger and deprivation in Gaza, but there was no famine.” — David Adesnik, Vice President of Research

“The famine that never was is now over. As with many of the aspersions cast at Israel, the false accusations travel much further than the corrections. But this is bigger than Israel. The Gaza war bodes ill for the reliability of information. Whether it is obvious artificial intelligence fakes designed to create sympathy for imagined suffering or bureaucratic bodies changing their standards to fit a preferred narrative, it has become increasingly difficult to trust information gathered online.” — David May, Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst