Fact Check: Posts Claim UN Said There's No Famine in Gaza. Here's What the Report Actually Said

Claim:

The United Nations said in early 2024 there was no famine in Gaza.

Rating:

False ( About this rating? )

The protracted, often bloody Israeli-Palestinian conflict exploded into a hot war on Oct. 7, 2023, when the militant Palestinian group Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel and Israel retaliated by bombarding the Gaza Strip. More than 20,000 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians, were reportedly killed during the first two months of the war alone. The violence is driven by mutual hostilities and territorial ambitions dating back more than a century. The internet has become an unofficial front in that war and is rife with misinformation, which Snopes is dedicated to countering with facts and context. You can help. Read the latest fact checks. Submit questionable claims. Become a Snopes Member to support our work. We welcome your participation and feedback .

On March 18, 2024, a United Nations committee known as the Famine Review Committee (FRC) endorsed the findings of a panel of experts convened to assess the food security situation in Gaza. That report's headline finding was catastrophic: Without any change in the situation, the entire northern portion of Gaza could face the U.N.'s highest famine classification by late May or early June 2024.

That report, and a similar one from a U.S. Agency for International Development-associated organization that works with the U.N. committee known as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), generated a wave of headlines and calls for Israeli leaders to increase the flow of aid into the strip.

At least partly as a result of the findings, the International Criminal Court issued applications for arrest warrants for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the "war crime of intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."

Weeks later, however, the U.N. appeared to reverse itself. The FRC released a report on June 4 that characterized previous dire projections for northern Gaza as implausible. Supporters of Israel and those skeptical of the ICC indictment took this report as an exoneration of Israel and, in some cases, as evidence there was no famine in Gaza in the first place:

However, the U.N. report that allegedly exonerated Israel did not make any "admission" that there was "no famine after all," nor did it clear Israeli leaders of the ICC charge of using starvation as a tool of war.

In fact, this report explicitly stated that an absence of data — not the existence of evidence against famine — drove its conclusion. That revised projection, experts on international law regarding starvation-related war crimes say, is unlikely to affect ICC prosecutors' case against Netanyahu and Gallant.

Famine Declarations and Arrest Warrants

The U.N. uses a standardized scale to inform policymakers and governments about the severity of the risk of famine in certain regions. Known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), it is an accepted academic framework to classify food security risk into five phases. The IPC five-phase scale is shown below, with Phase 5 indicating a catastrophic famine:

The U.N.'s FRC is the primary international body that oversees the analysis of food scarcity. It generally works with special expert panels it recruits, or with nongovernmental organizations and other international agencies such as FEWS NET, to make sure published analyses of food security risk accurately follow this standardized methodology.

The FRC's role, in a sense, is akin to that of peer-reviewers of academic papers. Ultimately, the committee makes the final call on endorsing or rejecting the findings of these experts. NGOs and panels cannot use the IPC framework without the FRC approving their work. Further, as the central body protecting the IPC framework, the FRC must, by regulation, technically examine any Phase 5 finding made by other groups or experts before publication, given the severity of the claim.

The FRC, for example, signed off on a Phase 5 declaration in March 2024, endorsing findings of an expert panel that projected widespread Phase 5 conditions in northern Gaza by May 2024:

Famine is imminent in the northern governorates and projected to occur anytime between mid-March and May 2024. … According to the most likely scenario, both North Gaza and Gaza Governorates are classified in IPC Phase 5 (Famine) with reasonable evidence, with 70% (around 210,000 people) of the population in IPC Phase 5 (Catastrophe). …

The southern governorates of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, and the Governorate of Rafah, are classified in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency). However, in a worst-case scenario, these governorates face a risk of Famine through July 2024. The entire population in the Gaza Strip (2.23 million) is facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

A report released the same day by FEWS NET and also reviewed by the FRC came to a similar conclusion. These reports led to international condemnation and fueled the charge that Israel was intentionally withholding aid as a means of warfare — a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Citing these reports, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres posted on X that, "1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger — the highest number of people ever recorded — anywhere, anytime," calling it "an entirely manmade disaster."

Israel disputed the reliability of the FRC projections even before they were published. The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a branch of the Israeli Defense Forces, issued a March 15, 2024, news release disputing the findings of the pending report:

A report is set to be released by international organizations presenting an image of hunger in the Gaza Strip. It is COGAT's assessment that the report does not represent the current situation in the Gaza Strip in regards to food security and availability.

This is due to the fact that over the last few weeks, and during the time these reports were being compiled, a number of significant new initiatives were implemented that improved the humanitarian situation, particularly in northern Gaza.

As these efforts and their impact are not reflected, the report does not accurately reflect the current situation on the ground and is outdated even before publication.

In a more-detailed rebuttal that COGAT posted days later, Israel denied intentionally starving civilians in Gaza. A central disagreement between the FRC and COGAT focused in large part on how the committee reached the conclusion there had been a significant decline in food-aid delivery following Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. It was in this context that, in May 2024, the ICC issued applications for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.

In a May 20, 2024, news release , the ICC prosecutor argued that Netanyahu and Gallant "intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival," citing the closure of crossings and the restrictions of aid delivery as a key part of this "common plan" to deprive Gazans of essential resources. That ICC announcement cited, among other things, Guterres' remarks that 1.1 million people could face starvation.

Changing Conditions and Revised Projections

The report that has been used as evidence to discredit previous famine projections as well as the ICC arrest warrants was an FRC review of a FEWS NET analysis of data through the end of April 2024. In the analysis, FEWS NET argued that much of northern Gaza had entered IPC Phase 5 conditions. As with the earlier report, the FRC reviewed the findings — but this time, it did not endorse the conclusions:

The FRC does not find the FEWS NET analysis plausible given the uncertainty and lack of convergence of the supporting evidence employed in the analysis. Therefore, the FRC is unable to make a determination as to whether or not famine thresholds have been passed during April.

As the FRC does not find the FEWS NET analysis plausible for the current period, the FRC is unable to endorse the IPC Phase 5 (Famine) classification for the projection period.

This report, released in early June 2024, was not an FRC research product similar to its March 2024 expert panel report. Instead, this report had the narrow task of reviewing a single FEWS NET assessment and projection made using data that ended in April.

As the FRC wrote in the report, "FEWS NET did not incorporate any estimate of privately contracted and/or commercial food truck entry into the Gaza and North Gaza Governorates in March and April 2024." FEWS NET excluded these because of the "large uncertainty regarding their distribution and caloric value." FRC stated this exclusion was in error. As a result, the committee concluded, FEWS NET's projections of widespread Phase 5 conditions were not plausible:

While the FRC concurs on the high level of uncertainty over which share of these deliveries is freely accessible to the population, assuming generic exclusion of the population from accessing this source of food might be another assumption which highly impacts on the overall analysis that is not supported by evidence.

Supporters of Israel presented these findings as an exoneration of Israel and a validation of their earlier criticism of the FRC projections. Under the headline "The Gaza Famine That Wasn't," National Review columnist Phil Klein argued , for example, that the new report rendered the ICC complaint against Israel as factually wrong:

The reports of mass starvation even helped lead the ICC to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. Yet, like many claims made by Israel's enemies and routinely parroted around the media, it has turned out to be completely false. …

To the extent that there are food shortages in the Strip, the issue is not food being let in by Israel, but aid being stolen or disrupted once it is inside of Gaza. But the blame for that rests squarely with Hamas, which is using claims of mass starvation to whip up international pressure against Israel.

While the FRC noted that "this FEWS NET projection is in line with the FRC projection done in March 2024," it cautioned that this report was out of date and that an FRC expert panel report based on data ending in May would follow.

A week later, FRC published its official update on Gaza. Like the March report, this FRC expert panel report looked back at the data from the proceeding months to asses actual famine conditions and also made projections moving forward to September 2024. "If anything, the prolonged nature of the crisis means that the risk of Famine remains at least as high as at any time during the last 9 months," they wrote in their update.

The FRC's review of the FEWS NET was, at best, a validation only of specific arguments about how to count the number of food trucks entering Gaza. Broader interpretations of that review justifying assertions that there is no famine in Gaza or absolves Israel of ICC charges are false and misleading, respectively.

First, the lack of endorsement of the most extreme IPC Phase 5 classification does not mean that significant numbers of civilians are not experiencing famine. Second, the charges being pursued by the ICC do not, in any way, hinge on an IPC Phase 5 declaration.

Food Scarcity and the Gaza Strip

The central argument used by commentators and social media posters to paint the FRC's May review of the FEWS NET analysis as exonerating Israel is that it allegedly showed there had been an adequate number of aid deliveries allowed into Gaza. Any famine, if it even exists, would not be Israel's fault as a result, they argue.

Snopes asked professor Alex de Waal of Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy — who is also executive director of the World Peace Foundation and leads research programs on African peacemaking and mass starvation — about this talking point.

"Starvation is the phenomenon of some people not having enough food to eat," de Waal told Snopes by email, "not the phenomenon of there not being enough food to eat." Just because food crosses a checkpoint into Gaza does not mean it is getting into the hands of people who need it, or that the deliveries fulfill the actual nutritional needs of Gazans, he said.

Several critics of the March projections have argued that, in addition to undercounting trucks, they captured an incomplete view of the food-security situation by assessing it at its worse and before it began to improve. The latest FRC report issued a week after their critique of the FEWS NET report, does not suggest that is the case.

That more thorough and up-to-date June report by an FRC expert panel noted the ameliorating effect of aid to northern Gaza , but it also mentioned a rapid deterioration of the situation in the region's south, where hostilities have since intensified:

In the southern governorates, the situation deteriorated following renewed hostilities in early May. Over one million people have been displaced since the start of the Rafah offensive on 6 May following attacks by air and sea across the territory and expansion into Deir alBalah, notably in Nuseirat Refugee Camp.

Humanitarian access to the two million people in the southern governorates has notably reduced with the closure of the Rafah border crossing and disruptions to the Karem Shalom crossing.

In its new June assessment, the FRC found that "the probable improvement in nutrition status noted in April and May should not allow room for complacency about the risk of famine in the coming weeks and months." The panel found it plausible that most of Gaza was in IPC Phase 4.

"The latest data show that, to be able to buy food, more than half of the households had to exchange their clothes for money and one third resorted to picking up trash to sell," the June analysis said. "More than half also reported that, often, they do not have any food to eat in the house, and over 20 percent go entire days and nights without eating."

FEWS NET, for its part, released a report partly in response to the FRC panel review reiterating its view that the criteria for famine, generally speaking, was still likely to have been surpassed in the north of Gaza by the end of April, as its report indicated.

The group also highlighted that the FRC's non-endorsement of its April analysis was predicated on the basis of a lack of data, not dispositive evidence against famine. "The FRC [was] unable to determine whether the Famine (IPC Phase 5) thresholds [had] been met or surpassed due to limited up-to-date, quantifiable evidence," FEWS NET wrote.

Intent — Not Severity — Key to ICC Charges

The ICC prosecution does not require an IPC Phase 5 classification to be valid. In a June 18 post on the World Peace Foundation website, Tuft's de Waal explained that "starvation crimes hinge on deprivation, not on the severity of outcome."

As Tom Dannenbaum , also a professor at Tuft's Fletcher School and the co-director of their Center for International Law & Governance, explained in a post for Just Security, there are two key elements behind the ICC's potential charges of deprivation:

The perpetrator must have engaged in the deprivation of objects indispensable to civilian survival.

The perpetrator must have done so intending to starve civilians as a method of warfare.

From the ICC's perspective, "there is no element that requires proving a consequence of these actions," Dannenbaum explained. "The Prosecutor does not need to prove that civilians starved as a result of the prohibited deprivation." As a result, the technical minutiae behind the endorsement of an IPC Phase 5 classification are irrelevant.

In terms of intent, as Dannebaum and others have pointed out , Netanyahu and Gallant explicitly stated an intent to deprive resources to Gazans as a tool of warfare:

Senior leaders were explicit from early on about the sustenance denial strategy and their roles in it. Among those listed today, Defense Minister Gallant announced on Oct. 9, 2023, "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."

Ten days later Prime Minister Netanyahu stated, "we will not allow humanitarian assistance, in the form of food and medicines, from our territory to the Gaza Strip." Other ministers have, at various points, articulated a deliberate policy of sustenance denial or openly blocked the delivery of food.

It is also important to note that, while the ICC notice of the application for arrest warrants makes reference to March FRC projections, the actual evidence presented by the prosecutor to the panel of experts that signed off on his case remains confidential.

Regardless, the reality of a deprivation of resources is a much more complicated question than simply counting the number of food trucks going into the Gaza Strip. As de Waal told Snopes by email, "The overall quantity of food available tells us little about who is eating it, especially with the breakdown of law and order and the specialized therapeutic nutritional care needed for severely malnourished children."

Dannenbaum, who argued that "key factual components of starvation crimes [by Netanyahu and Gallant] are relatively clear in the current context," highlighted several other incidents, including attacks on humanitarian workers and facilities, and on food and water systems that could be considered deprivation under international law:

Impeding humanitarian relief ( including through denials of access to Gaza as a whole and northern Gaza in particular , fostering or enabling Israeli civilians to block humanitarian convoys or destroy their cargo, arbitrary and unpredictable access criteria, and refusals to engage in necessary deconfliction);

Attacking humanitarian actors , distribution centers , and convoys ;

Attacking or otherwise destroying food, water , and the systems by which they are maintained and produced (such as agricultural areas , water systems and the like);

Rendering such systems useless (such as through impeding the delivery of fuel or power to desalination plants ).

Snopes asked de Waal whether the FRC's reassessment of the March projections complicates the ICC's case. "If I were the ICC prosecutor," he wrote, "I would be entirely unworried."

The Bottom Line

Because the U.N. report cited as evidence in rumors that there's no famine in Gaza made no such assertion, this claim is rated "False." In June, that same U.N. body wrote that "the situation in Gaza is catastrophic … If anything, the prolonged nature of the crisis means that the risk of famine remains at least as high as at any time during the last 9 months."

Additionally, claims that the FRC report disputing FEWS NET's projection affects or negates the starvation charges against Netanyahu and Gallant are misguided, as such prosecutions do not rest on IPC phase classifications specifically, or the even severity of famine more generally.

Sources:

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