IBAHRI urges immediate international action as Palestinians face starvation under Israeli blockade of Gaza
As the Israeli government continues to impose a total siege on the Gaza Strip – worsening an already desperate humanitarian crisis – the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) condemns the ongoing starvation of Gaza’s population as an inhuman war strategy and grave breach of international law. The IBAHRI calls on the international community to respond robustly and urgently to stop this carnage.
The IBAHRI calls on the international community to exert pressure on Israel to lift the aid blockade and ensure the entry of humanitarian and commercial goods into Gaza. Beyond ensuring the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid, those responsible for the policy of starvation must be held accountable for the crimes they committed.
Hina Jilani, Chair of the IBAHRI, remarked: 'The prolonged blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza by Israeli authorities is in violation of international law and cannot be allowed to continue. The 4th Geneva Convention prohibits the denial of humanitarian access to civilians, including children, in times of conflict. People in Gaza are facing catastrophic hunger and those with chronic illnesses are being deprived of life-saving medication by this ongoing obstruction of aid. The international community must intervene.’
Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, Director of the IBAHRI, stated: ‘The deliberate obstruction of humanitarian aid, resulting in hunger and widespread civilian suffering, is a grave violation of human rights and humanitarian law. Preventing access to food, water and medical care not only breaches international law but also defies the core principles of humanity and dignity.’
Dr Mark Ellis added: ‘The latest military operations – including intensified aerial bombardments and ground incursions in southern Gaza – have deepened an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Widespread civilian casualties, the destruction of essential infrastructure and persistent obstruction of humanitarian access constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.’
Since 2 March 2025, no humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza, home to more than two million people, the majority of whom depend on aid to survive. Israeli authorities have fully sealed Gaza’s borders by land, sea and air, starving the population in what is now the longest ban on aid since October 2023. This means depriving Gaza’s population of the most basic means to sustain life. Flour, food parcels, medical supplies, fuel, and vaccines for children are critically low, while trauma kits and surgical materials for mass casualty response are nearly depleted.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is being compounded by Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s food production capacity, including the reported targeting of bakeries, fishing boats, storage warehouses and emergency kitchens. In the report Starvation and the right to food, with an emphasis on the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, wrote:
‘On 9 October 2023, Israel announced its starvation campaign against Gaza. By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80 per cent of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger. Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza […] By destroying and poisoning agricultural land, decimating ports and fishing vessels, Israel has destroyed approximately 93 per cent of the economy of the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector […] Israel has used starvation with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people by “(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinian people; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part” ( Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II ).’
Children in particular are suffering catastrophic consequences. In a statement by the children’s rights charity Save the Children, the situation is described as ‘a deliberate humanitarian catastrophe. Children are being starved by design, under Israeli authorities' total siege.’ According to the UN, since January, around 10,000 cases of acute malnutrition have been identified, including 1,600 cases of severe acute malnutrition, and, according to the World Health Organization , at least 57 children have already died of starvation, pushing Gaza’s population to the brink each passing day.
Food and aid are available and waiting just across the border: nearly 3,000 trucks from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and over 116,000 metric tonnes of World Food Programme food assistance are ready to enter Gaza. This would be enough to feed one million people for up to four months. In a recent statement, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher , described the Israeli authorities’ deliberate decision to block humanitarian aid to Gaza as a ‘cruel collective punishment’ of Palestinians. According to Mr Fletcher: ‘Two months ago, the Israeli authorities took a deliberate decision to block all aid to Gaza and halt our efforts to save survivors of their military offensive. They have been bracingly honest that this policy is to pressurise Hamas.’
Using food as a weapon of war is a strategy of mass destruction that inherently violates the international humanitarian law principles of proportionality and distinction, as it aims to inflict maximal harm without regard for any distinction between civilians and combatants. It is designed to exert total control, as it denies an entire population the most basic means to survive.
Starvation is an act of intentional violence so horrific that it is explicitly recognised as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Its indiscriminate nature also renders it a form of collective punishment of the civilian population – another war crime. Even more alarming is that the starvation of the Palestinian population in Gaza is to be considered in a context of documented patterns of genocidal acts.
Through the UN Security Council Resolutions 2417 and 2573, the international community has repeatedly affirmed that the intentional starvation of civilians is a war crime and must be prevented. During public hearings at the International Court of Justice in April – on the request for an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligation to allow aid in Gaza – multiple states, including many from Europe, called on the Court to compel Israel to end the crime of starvation. These statements must now be matched with decisive action, the time for words has passed.
ENDS
Contact: IBAHRI@int-bar.org
Notes to the reader:
The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), established in 1995 under Founding Honorary President Nelson Mandela, is an autonomous entity working to promote, protect and enforce human rights under a just rule of law, and to preserve the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession worldwide.
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The International Bar Association (IBA), the global voice of the legal profession, is the foremost organisation for international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies. Established in 1947, shortly after the creation of the United Nations, with the aim of protecting and promoting the rule of law globally, the IBA was born out of the conviction that an organisation made up of the world's bar associations could contribute to global stability and peace through the administration of justice.
Website page link for this news release:
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Full link: https://www.ibanet.org/IBAHRI-urges-immediate-international-action-as-Palestinians-face-starvation-under-Israeli-blockade-of-Gaza