The UN Just Issued Its Most Alarming Gaza Famine Warning Yet

The food is at the border. People are starving inside.

The crisis in Gaza has largely fallen from the headlines just as the humanitarian disaster there reaches unprecedented levels, 19 months into the conflict.

Since March 5 and the collapse of the ceasefire, Israeli authorities have implemented a total commercial and humanitarian blockade of the Strip. Put simply: no food, fuel, or medicine has entered Gaza in over two months. This has driven the price of food—and all commodities—to levels far beyond the reach of most Gazans.

Meanwhile, humanitarian stockpiles are being rapidly depleted. The World Food Programme ran out of supplies to support hot meals on April 25. Four days ago, the NGO World Central Kitchen ceased operations due to a lack of food and supplies. “After serving more than 130 million total meals and 26 million loaves of bread over the past 18 months, World Central Kitchen no longer has the supplies to cook meals or bake bread in Gaza,” the NGO said in a statement.

Gaza is running out of food, leading to an unprecedented number of people facing famine. According to a UN report released today, approximately 477,000 people trapped in Gaza are experiencing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, making a full-blown famine “increasingly likely” if the blockade persists.

The UN uses a technical classification system to describe levels of food insecurity, ranging from Level 1 (households can feed themselves without resorting to irregular coping mechanisms) to Level 5 (families begin to starve to death, children first, because they can’t access food). Level 5 may include an official famine declaration once excess mortality due to starvation crosses a certain threshold. Crucially, famine is only declared after it’s determined that people are dying from starvation in significant numbers.

With that in mind, consider how the new UN report describes the situation in Gaza today:

Nineteen months into the conflict, the Gaza Strip is still confronted with a critical risk of famine. Over 60 days have passed since all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies were blocked from entering the territory. Goods indispensable for people’s survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks. The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation. From 11 May to the end of September 2025, the whole territory is classified in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), with the entire population expected to face Crisis or worse acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3 or above). This includes 470,000 people (22 percent of the population) in Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5), over a million people (54 percent) in Emergency (IPC Phase 4), and the remaining half million (24 percent) in Crisis (IPC Phase 3).

This marks a significant deterioration compared to the previous IPC analysis (released in October 2024) and the already dire conditions detected between 1 April–10 May 2025. During that time, 1.95 million people (93 percent) were classified in Crisis or worse (IPC Phase 3 or above), including 244,000 people (12 percent) in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe) and 925,000 (44 percent) in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency).

In other words, the food security situation was already extremely dire—and it has suddenly gotten much worse as a direct consequence of the complete blockade of aid into Gaza.

The solution remains what it has always been: the fighting must stop, and Israeli authorities must allow humanitarian goods to enter Gaza. “Families in Gaza are starving while the food they need is sitting at the border. We can’t get it to them because of the renewed conflict and the total ban on humanitarian aid imposed in early March,” said UN World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain in a statement today. “It’s imperative that the international community acts urgently to get aid flowing into Gaza again. If we wait until after a famine is confirmed, it will already be too late for many people.”

All this is unfolding as the conflict is poised to escalate further. The Israeli government has committed to a massive expansion of the war, an operation it’s calling “Gideon’s Chariots,” intended to completely raze what remains of Gaza and force the surviving population into undefined “humanitarian zones.”

This new report from the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification provides a clear and grim warning: a mass famine will engulf Gaza if current conditions persist — and yet, there’s little reason to expect things will get much better.