United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday implored the international community to denounce the use of hunger as a weapon of war.
Earlier, UN agencies have been warning of life-threatening hunger in Gaza as aid supplies dried up, and international pressure has been building for a ceasefire to allow a massive relief operation.
Meanwhile, Israel’s government, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, furiously denies that it is using hunger as a weapon of war, and instead accuses the aid agencies of failing to pick up and distribute aid delivered to Gaza’s border crossing points.
During a UN conference in Ethiopia by video, Guterres said, “Climate change is disrupting harvests, supply chains, and humanitarian aid. Conflict continues to spread hunger from Gaza to Sudan and beyond.”
He added that, “Hunger fuels instability and undermines peace. We must never accept hunger as a weapon of war.”
In the Gaza Strip, the war-shattered Palestinian territory is gripped by dire humanitarian conditions created by 21 months of war and made worse by Israel’s total blockade of aid from March to May.
Since the easing of the blockade, the levels of aid reaching Gaza have been far below what aid groups say is needed.
On Sunday, as Israel began a “tactical pause” in the fighting to allow the UN and aid agencies to tackle a deepening hunger crisis, the World Health Organization warned that malnutrition was reaching “alarming levels.”
Sudan is “the largest humanitarian catastrophe facing our world and also the least remembered”, Othman Belbeisi, the regional director of UN’s IOM migration agency, told reporters last week.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a fierce power struggle between the army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, the commander of the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The conflict has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and forced over seven million individuals from their homes.