The UN has formally declared famine in Gaza, following more than 22 months of war in the Palestinian enclave.
Israel has tightened its siege of the territory since the October 2023 attacks and has restricted aid deliveries, often allowing only limited supplies to enter.
Hundreds of people have died of hunger in recent months, particularly in Gaza city, the enclave’s largest urban centre, where Israel has launched a new ground assault aimed at seizing control. Israeli forces have killed other people as they try to reach aid sites or convoys.
The famine declaration in the Gaza governorate comes as Israel is expected to issue a formal response to a ceasefire proposal already accepted by Hamas.
Here is what you need to know about famine and how it unfolded in Gaza:
What is famine?
The UN defines famine through the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a system that sets hard thresholds for catastrophe.
A famine is declared when at least 20 per cent of households face extreme food shortages, more than 30 per cent of children under five suffer from acute malnutrition, and the daily death rate reaches or exceeds two out of every 10,000 people.
Famine isn’t just hunger or poverty. It’s when widespread starvation, disease and malnutrition have converged to such a degree that mass death is already underway.
While many countries and regions face shortages of food, famine is only declared by the UN when certain conditions are met.
What are the five stages?
The IPC is a five-stage scale that measures food security.
The first stage is none or minimal. In this case, people have access to essential and non-essential foods and their needs are met without having to engage in any unusual attempts to secure food.
The second stage is "stressed". Here, households have “minimally adequate” food consumption but are unable to afford some essential non-food items.
The third stage is "crisis". In this stage, people either have “food consumption gaps” that are reflected by high levels of “acute malnutrition", or they are able to meet their minimal food needs, but only through selling some assets or deploying crisis strategies.
In the fourth stage, the UN declares an “emergency". In a food security emergency, the lack of food is leading to “very high acute malnutrition” and excess deaths. Households are only able to cope with the lack of food by “employing emergency livelihood strategies” or liquidating their assets.
The fifth stage of the IPC scale is a catastrophe or a famine. In this case, households have an extreme lack of food and basic needs, even after they have tried all of their coping strategies.
When were famines formally declared?
Famines are rare because the declaration carries such significance. Until now, the IPC had confirmed four famines in the previous 15 years: Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and most recently Sudan in 2024.
Famine was officially declared in a part of North Darfur in Sudan in July 2024 due to escalating violence which had been persisting for more than 15 months, severely impeding humanitarian access.
In 2020, famine was declared in four parts of South Sudan after violence and flooding destroyed homes, caused massive displacement and cut off access to humanitarian services.
The same country had suffered the same fate in 2017, when famine was declared in parts of Unity State, the central-northern part of South Sudan. Nearly 80,000 people faced famine conditions, with another one million people being classified in "emergency", IPC's fourth phase. By then, three years of civil war had devastated livelihoods.
Before that, famine was declared in two regions of southern Somalia in 2011, affecting about 490,000 people, after a catastrophic drought and war.
What happens when famine is declared?
A famine declaration forces governments, donors and agencies to mobilise resources fast. It is designed to save lives by drawing an urgent response, but history shows it rarely reverses the damage already done.
The official declaration also has political consequences. It can embarrass governments, expose neglect, or reveal that conflict is being used as a weapon of hunger.
In Gaza, Israel has faced repeated accusations of using food as a weapon. Several Israeli politicians have openly argued that restricting the entry of supplies is a legitimate strategy to weaken armed groups.
UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said that its data showed a six-fold increase in the number of children suffering from malnutrition in Gaza city since March.
How did famine hit Gaza?
Gaza’s case is extreme because it is man-made and systematic. Food production has been destroyed, farmland bombed and fisheries blocked, with bakeries and mills out of service.
Blockades and restrictions choke off outside supplies. People are surviving on scraps, with entire families going days without food. Many experts described it as starvation by design.
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organisation backed by Israel and the US, began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution that the UN has rejected as inadequate, dangerous and a violation of impartiality rules.
But scenes of chaos immediately unfolded at or near GHF distribution sites. The system was heavily criticised. The UN declined to take part in the GHF's operations, accusing the group of militarising aid delivery and putting Palestinians at dire risk.
The GHF distribution system was introduced after Israel had prevented all aid, food and water from entering the Gaza Strip for nearly three months, leading to severe food shortages and famine warnings for the territory's 2.3 million residents.
Children are the most visible victims: rates of acute malnutrition have surged beyond emergency thresholds. Aid groups report infants dying from dehydration and starvation.
Most famines in modern times are linked to drought, crop failure, or conflict blocking aid. In Gaza, the infrastructure was dismantled in months, food and fuel are systematically denied, and the crisis is used as a tool of war.
UN World Food Programme director of emergencies Ross Smith said last month: “It's clearly a disaster unfolding in front of our eyes, in front of our television screens. This is not a warning, this is a call to action. This is unlike anything we have seen in this century.”
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Biography
Favourite drink: Must have karak chai and Chinese tea every day
Favourite non-Chinese food: Arabic sweets and Indian puri, small round bread of wheat flour
Favourite Chinese dish: Spicy boiled fish or anything cooked by her mother because of its flavour
Best vacation: Returning home to China
Music interests: Enjoys playing the zheng, a string musical instrument
Enjoys reading: Chinese novels, romantic comedies, reading up on business trends, government policy changes
Favourite book: Chairman Mao Zedong’s poems
Three-day coronation
Royal purification
The entire coronation ceremony extends over three days from May 4-6, but Saturday is the one to watch. At the time of 10:09am the royal purification ceremony begins. Wearing a white robe, the king will enter a pavilion at the Grand Palace, where he will be doused in sacred water from five rivers and four ponds in Thailand. In the distant past water was collected from specific rivers in India, reflecting the influential blend of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology on the coronation. Hindu Brahmins and the country's most senior Buddhist monks will be present. Coronation practices can be traced back thousands of years to ancient India.
The crown
Not long after royal purification rites, the king proceeds to the Baisal Daksin Throne Hall where he receives sacred water from eight directions. Symbolically that means he has received legitimacy from all directions of the kingdom. He ascends the Bhadrapitha Throne, where in regal robes he sits under a Nine-Tiered Umbrella of State. Brahmins will hand the monarch the royal regalia, including a wooden sceptre inlaid with gold, a precious stone-encrusted sword believed to have been found in a lake in northern Cambodia, slippers, and a whisk made from yak's hair.
The Great Crown of Victory is the centrepiece. Tiered, gold and weighing 7.3 kilograms, it has a diamond from India at the top. Vajiralongkorn will personally place the crown on his own head and then issues his first royal command.
The audience
On Saturday afternoon, the newly-crowned king is set to grant a "grand audience" to members of the royal family, the privy council, the cabinet and senior officials. Two hours later the king will visit the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, the most sacred space in Thailand, which on normal days is thronged with tourists. He then symbolically moves into the Royal Residence.
The procession
The main element of Sunday's ceremonies, streets across Bangkok's historic heart have been blocked off in preparation for this moment. The king will sit on a royal palanquin carried by soldiers dressed in colourful traditional garb. A 21-gun salute will start the procession. Some 200,000 people are expected to line the seven-kilometre route around the city.
Meet the people
On the last day of the ceremony Rama X will appear on the balcony of Suddhaisavarya Prasad Hall in the Grand Palace at 4:30pm "to receive the good wishes of the people". An hour later, diplomats will be given an audience at the Grand Palace. This is the only time during the ceremony that representatives of foreign governments will greet the king.
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Draw
Quarter-finals
Real Madrid (ESP) or Manchester City (ENG) v Juventus (ITA) or Lyon (FRA)
RB Leipzig (GER) v Atletico Madrid (ESP)
Barcelona (ESP) or Napoli (ITA) v Bayern Munich (GER) or Chelsea (ENG)
Atalanta (ITA) v Paris Saint-Germain (FRA)
Ties to be played August 12-15 in Lisbon
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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The BIO
Favourite piece of music: Verdi’s Requiem. It’s awe-inspiring.
Biggest inspiration: My father, as I grew up in a house where music was constantly played on a wind-up gramophone. I had amazing music teachers in primary and secondary school who inspired me to take my music further. They encouraged me to take up music as a profession and I follow in their footsteps, encouraging others to do the same.
Favourite book: Ian McEwan’s Atonement – the ending alone knocked me for six.
Favourite holiday destination: Italy - music and opera is so much part of the life there. I love it.
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The seven points are:
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Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
