A group of ten top UN experts yesterday stated that famine has now spread across the entirety of the Gaza Strip, [Common Dreams reported] July 9. The group was not speaking for the United Nations as an institution, but included such individuals as Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967; Paula Gaviria Betancur, special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons; and Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food.
In the report, they pointed to the deaths since May of Palestinian children from hunger and malnutrition and lack of access to proper medical care. Although some of the children were receiving medical treatment, it wasn’t adequate to prevent their deaths. “With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” the statement read. Since last October, at least 34 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them children, have died from malnutrition.
