Aid will be too late when famine hits Gaza, warns UNICEF
Famine is so close in Gaza that when it does hit it will be too late for aid to arrive and there will be mass death, UNICEF's Global spokesperson James Elder has warned.
He described what is happening in the Palestinian territory as "abhorrent" and said that when the killing so many children ceases to shock, "then we've gone beyond living in a tragedy. We're complicit in it".
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza's 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Elder said that while the global focus is on malnutrition, there are so many children who have been killed and injured that the situation is becoming "normalised".
He said humanitarian aid is more than food.
"It's hygiene kits. It's obstetric kits. It's incubators, it's wheelchairs, it's blankets, it's vaccines."
Mr Elder said people do not know where to go now, describing the whole of Gaza as a combat zone.
He added that he has never before seen the suffering that he has witnessed in Gaza.
He said: "There's no exaggeration, every single child in this place needs mental health support. It's night after night of bombardment. There's not a child here who doesn't know someone who's been killed, who hasn't seen the most ghastly ghastly wounds."
In relation to the Israeli aid blockade, Mr Elder said that every time the world's most reputable body on nutrition says how close the population is to famine, "then authorities just loosen the noose a little bit and a bit of aid is allowed to come in.
"And then when international attention dissipates, it's tightened once more. When famine hits, it will be too late. Famine is a statistical definition that means mass death.
"Starvation, starvation is different. Starvation is when the body starts eating itself, when you get cognitive decline. Starvation's happening here right now, children's bodies are not waiting for some global declaration," he said.
Mr Elder said the focus now is on is on malnutrition and "suddenly the daily killing ... of girls and boys seems to be something that people don't dwell on."
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