Tag: Famine & food security

How charity ship Open Arms is delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza

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The ship Opens Arms left Cyprus for the Gaza coast on October 12 with 200 tonnes of food supplies, the first ship to sail as part of a maritime aid corridor initiated by Cyprus, with the support of the European Union, the UK and the US. Given the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the charities leading the effort felt they couldn’t wait for the US military to complete a pier to deliver aid.

The 200 tonnes of food supplies transported by the Open Arms is already bringing hope to the people of Gaza. Some Gazans even rushed to the beach near Gaza City on Sunday, hoping to see the ship and its desperately needed cargo arrive, AFP reported.

Aid agencies have warned of looming famine in the Palestinian territory of 2.4 million inhabitants.

Israel has imposed a near-total blockade on Gaza since the start of its war with Hamas five months ago.  Given the humanitarian emergency that has resulted, the EU decided to push for a maritime aid route via Cyprus, the EU country closest to Gaza.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday said it was the first time a ship had been authorized to deliver aid directly to Gaza since 2005 and that the EU would work with “smaller ships” until the US military completes work on its floating port off the Gazan coast.

Open Arms, a Spanish charity, is partnered by the US charity World Central Kitchen (WCK), founded by the Spanish-American restaurateur José Andrés. Open Arms spokeswoman Laura Lanuza said that WCK’s teams in Gaza were “constructing a dock” to unload the Open Arms’s cargo. The charities have kept the location of the landing point secret for security reasons.

Under Israeli land, air, and sea blockade for sixteen years, Gaza has no functioning port.

“We have been working on this technical project for several weeks,” explained Lanuza.  

“We had to be imaginative and find a way to overcome all these obstacles related to the landing site that will be done from the platform we are transporting,” she said.

The barge, a floating platform carrying 200 tonnes of food, is currently being towed by the humanitarian ship in the middle of the Mediterranean. In a video filmed before the fleet’s departure from Cyprus and posted on X, the NGO WCK explains: “You can see behind me, we have this barge. It’s about 200 tonnes that we are currently loading with all kinds of food aid. Once it reaches its destination, it will be lifted by a crane. Then we will transport the supplies to the northern part of the Gaza Strip to help those in need at this time.”

Construction of a jetty in Gaza

WCK says its teams in Gaza are working “day and night” on the construction of a pier, leveraging the extensive experience it has providing humanitarian aid worldwide. “In Gaza, it already manages around 60 kitchens run by local residents, mainly women, who cook and prepare meals for those in need,” reports the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

However, “the influx of large quantities of goods will require special preparations –  warehouses, transportation, security, and supervision of distribution – which have not yet been organized”,  Haaretz points out.

Security is of the uppermost in people’s minds, after the tragedy on March 1 in which over 115 Palestinians were killed during a humanitarian aid delivery, crushed in a stampede and also hit by Israeli gunfire.

“We have to be careful. We have every guarantee that everything will be fine, but the reality in Gaza is changing all the time,” admits Lanuza. “We’re trying to avoid any danger to the population, of course.”

Approved by Israel

The aid corridor, supported by Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates, has received approval from Israel. The ship’s cargo was inspected in advance by Israeli military personnel in Larnaca to ensure it did not contain any military equipment, weapons, or materials that could be used for military purposes, according to Haaretz.

Israel has also committed to participating in the construction project of a pier promised by the United States on the Gaza coast. The Pentagon specified that building this structure will take up to 60 days and likely involve over 1,000 soldiers. The temporary port “could provide over two million meals per day to the citizens of Gaza”, according to Pentagon spokesperson Pat Ryde.

A US Navy ship has departed from the United States with the necessary equipment for the construction of the pier. The Israeli military spokesperson, Rear Admiral  Daniel Hagari, stated that Israel is “coordinating the establishment” of this infrastructure.

Israel’s Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant, posting on X, said that aid from the maritime corridor “will help to achieve one of the main goals of the war: The collapse of Hamas rule. We will make sure that the aid goes to those who need it, and not to those who don’t.”

Israel accuses the Palestinian movement, which took control in Gaza in 2007, of diverting humanitarian aid within the territory.

A second humanitarian cargo ship in the starting blocks

The construction of a safe, temporary port should help ensure the arrival of aid by sea.

According to Gaza’s ministry of health, 25 people, mostly children, have already died from malnutrition and dehydration, as massive shortages leave the enclave on the brink of famine.

Open Arms is already preparing a second humanitarian aid ship from Cyprus with a much larger cargo.  Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said Tuesday that “if all goes according to plan… we have already put in place the mechanism for a second and much bigger cargo.

“And then we’ll be working towards making this a more systematic exercise with increased volumes,” he added.

The UN believes that sending aid by sea and increasing airdrops of food cannot replace the need for access to Gaza by road. While welcoming the news of the first humanitarian ship, Jens Laerke, the spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reiterated on Tuesday that it was “not a substitute for the overland transport of food and other emergency aid into Gaza and particularly northern Gaza. It cannot make up for that”.

The airdrop of parcels over the city of Gaza on March 9 resulted in the death of five people and the injury of 10, according to a hospital source. The Jordanian and American militaries denied that their aircraft were involved in the incident. Belgium, Egypt, France, and the Netherlands are also conducting aid drops in the territory.

(With AFP)

This article has been translated from the original in French.  

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In northern Gaza, ‘people have nothing left to eat’

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At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration in Gaza, the enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Wednesday. It reported that most of those dead are children. With limited access to food and healthcare, aid officials have warned for months that Palestinians in the enclave are at risk of famine.

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Famine is becoming a real threat for Gazans, exhausted by five months of war. At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reported Wednesday.

Representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) in recent days have visited hospitals in the north of the enclave for the first time since the conflict broke out in October 2023. The workers found “severe levels of malnutrition, children dying of starvation, serious shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies, hospital buildings destroyed”, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.


Famine is defined by the UN as “a situation in which a substantial proportion of the population of a country or region are unable to access adequate food, resulting in widespread acute malnutrition and loss of life by starvation and disease”.

It has warned that a famine is “almost inevitable” for the 2.2 million inhabitants of Gaza.

90 percent of children between six and 23 months old as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women are facing severe food poverty across the territory, according to a report released in February by the Global Nutrition Cluster, a network of NGOs led by UNICEF.

Aid organisations on the ground blame Israel for preventing enough food trucks from entering the enclave.

Read moreMalnourished, sick and scared: Pregnant women in Gaza face ‘unthinkable challenges’

President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered the US military to open a temporary aid port off the coast of Gaza.

On Friday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said a maritime aid corridor between Cyprus and Gaza could open as soon as this weekend.

FRANCE 24 spoke to Jean-Raphaël Poitou, regional director for Action Against Hunger in the Middle East, who says Palestinians in northern Gaza have “nothing left to eat”.

He says if aid continues to be as limited as it is now, the death toll linked to food poverty in the enclave “could rise sharply” in the coming weeks.

Are we talking about an ongoing famine in Gaza or a risk of famine?

Jean-Raphaël Poitou: We are starting to see people, particularly children, die of malnutrition. So yes, we are talking about famine or at the very least, an advanced risk of famine.

To determine whether a famine is ongoing, the UN relies on criteria given by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). The IPC is a standardised system developed by the FAO and other international organisations used to classify and communicate the level of famine or food security in a given context.

A report published back in December had already warned of extremely advanced risks in several areas of Gaza. On a scale of five levels of food insecurity, we reached level three [crisis level]. Given that aid is still lacking, it is normal that three months later, the ranking has moved up to levels four or five [emergency and famine, respectively] – the highest ranking.

Children are particularly vulnerable because their immune systems are not yet fully developed, so their bodies cannot defend themselves the way adult bodies can. We also need to take into account all the elements that accelerate severe malnutrition, like the lack of drinking water, degraded sanitary conditions, respiratory problems and an entirely destroyed access to healthcare. Malnutrition has long-term effects for children, especially on their brains. That is why children under five are prioritised – their brains are not yet fully developed.

Northern Gaza is one of the areas worst hit by malnutrition. What do they have left to eat?

They have nothing left to eat. When we speak to colleagues on the ground, they say Gazans will eat anything, even grass or leaves. Dozens of UN missions have tried entering the north of the enclave, but according to the latest figures, the Israeli army has only accepted 20 percent of the 77 requests made.

Food is unaffordable in Rafah, southern Gaza. Not enough aid is making it through and little has improved in that regard. The attacks on aid convoys show that people are in total desperation to find the food they need to survive.

Read more‘Flour massacre’: Lifesaving aid becomes a deadly struggle in Gaza

It complicates our work in the field. We cannot put our teams at risk, so we have to work on a much smaller scale with communities we know well. Our aid distributions generally include chickpeas, oil or flour, since bread is a staple food. We also used to distribute vegetables when crops were still available in the fields.

When thinking of famines, people often conjure up the terrible images of emaciated children in Somalia during the early 1990s. Is that something we could see happening in Gaza?

It is true that it is not common to see those kinds of images in a Middle Eastern context, but that is what is happening in Gaza right now. And we’re likely to see more and more of them.

We cannot deliver aid on a large scale and we cannot organise distributions without a ceasefire. But we do have solutions and protocols for treating extreme cases of malnutrition like peanut-based foods, which are very rich in calories. They allow children to recover and halt the process of malnutrition.

Still, we need access to these populations. If we do nothing in the meantime, people will starve to death and the number of victims will start to spike.

Last weekend, the US airdropped food and other humanitarian aid into Gaza. Is this a tenable solution to compensate the lack of trucks entering the enclave?

In our point of view, this is not the method to use. We know from experience small groups can hijack parachutes and that the method encourages criminality. What’s more, those most vulnerable won’t be able to access that aid, only the strongest will be able to collect it. That is why we do not encourage this practice at all. We really need to work on a diplomatic level to open up different aid access routes and ensure it is properly distributed.

  • At least 20 percent of households face extreme lack of food
  • At least 30 percent of children suffer from acute malnutrition
  • Two people for every 10,000 die each day due to outright starvation or to the interaction of malnutrition and disease

This article is a translation of the original version in French.



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