Save the Children: Gaza’s Starving Children Too Weak to Cry

NEW YORK:  The head of Save the Children has delivered a harrowing warning to the United Nations Security Council, describing how Gaza’s famine is leaving children so malnourished they are unable to cry out in pain.

Inger Ashing, president of the international charity, told the council on Wednesday that famine is not just “a technical term” but a devastating reality for hundreds of thousands of people in the territory.

“When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully. This, in simple terms, is what famine is,” Ashing said.

She described the slow and agonizing process of starvation, where the body first burns fat reserves, then consumes muscle and eventually vital organs.

“Yet our clinics are almost silent,” she added. “Children no longer have the strength to speak or even cry out. They lie there, emaciated, literally wasting away.”

Ashing accused Israel of systematically blocking the entry of food and essential supplies into Gaza over nearly two years of war, triggered by the October 2023 Hamas attack. She stressed that aid groups had long warned that famine was imminent.

“Everyone in this room has a legal and moral responsibility to act to stop this atrocity,” she told the council.

The United Nations officially declared famine in Gaza last Friday, citing systematic obstruction of aid. A UN-backed food security monitor, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), estimated that famine is already affecting half a million people in the Gaza governorate, including Gaza City.

The IPC further warned that by the end of September, famine could engulf two-thirds of Gaza’s population if urgent action is not taken.