Former UN aid chief: Israel committing ‘worst crime of the 21st century' in Gaza
In an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Middle East Eye's Expert Witness Podcast, Griffiths said the deliberate starvation in Gaza is the worst he has seen in his many decades of work as a humanitarian.
'There can frankly be very little doubt that we are seeing starvation and hunger as an instrument of the war,' he told MEE.
'There is no prior experience in my five decades of humanitarian experience that can come close to comparison to the horror we are all seeing in Gaza,' he said.
'The UN announcement, based on serious hospital data, that people are fainting in the street from hunger and malnutrition, tells us all we need to know.
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'It is a historic fact that children die first in these circumstances. Our humanity cannot believe our eyes.'
Israel's siege on Gaza since 2 March has blocked the entry of humanitarian supplies by the UN and its partner organisations to the enclave, bringing the 2.1 million population to the brink of famine.
At least 101 Palestinians, including 80 children, have died of starvation since March, including 15 who died of malnutrition on Monday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The UN's agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), the largest humanitarian provider in Gaza, has had 6,000 trucks loaded with food and medical supplies in Egypt and Jordan for four and a half months, but Israel has yet to let them in.
Prior to the current siege, aid groups were able to bring in around 600 trucks per day - the minimum amount of aid humanitarian organisations say is needed for Gaza's population, Unrwa head Philippe Lazzarini told MEE in May.
Unrwa's communications director, Julitte Touma, told MEE on Tuesday that the agency has been receiving 'S.O.S messages' from Palestinians, including its own staff, pleading for any food for them and their children. Some staff members have fainted on duty because of hunger, Touma said.
'It's a genocide'
Griffiths has over 50 years of professional experience as a humanitarian and conflict mediator with the United Nations and other global institutions.
He has served as the UN's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, the top humanitarian aid position at the UN. In this capacity, he served for three years between July 2021 and July 2024, under the leadership of Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Members of the UN Security Council listen as Martin Griffiths speaks during a meeting on the war in Gaza, in New York on 13 May 2024 (AFP)
He presided over the UN's humanitarian aid efforts in the first nine months of Israel's devastating onslaught on Gaza, which he now labels a genocide.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN's principal judicial organ, issued binding orders to Israel in July, March and May last year to allow and ensure the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza amid warnings of an impending famine.
Israel has failed to abide by the orders.
'I am absolutely convinced that what's going on in Gaza is a genocide, because the thing speaks for itself'
- Martin Griffiths
The provisional measures orders are part of the case brought by South Africa against Israel at the ICJ, accusing it of breaching the Genocide Convention of 1948, including by imposing conditions of life intended to destroy Palestinians as a group.
'I am absolutely convinced that what's going on in Gaza is a genocide, because the thing speaks for itself,' said Griffiths.
He added that what's unique about Gaza is the impunity for the well-documented atrocities over the past 21 months.
'Gaza is a place for massive impunity,' he said.
He also warned that the continued international failure to hold Israel accountable creates a precedent for other actors in different conflicts to follow suit without fear of consequences, because 'Israel is getting away with terrible crimes'.
'What happens in Gaza doesn't stay in Gaza.'
GHF 'a lure for displacement'
Griffiths denounced the US-backed aid distribution scheme in Gaza, led by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), as a 'lure for displacement'.
The GHF was launched in May with the aim of replacing the UN's humanitarian work in Gaza and stopping aid reaching Hamas. But since then, the UN says that more than 1,000 starving Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army while seeking aid at the militarised GHF's distribution centres in the south of Gaza.
Griffiths says the GHF undermines humanitarian action around the world.
'This is an attempt to use humanitarian delivery as a way of claiming some credit, because we're keeping the people alive. And the argument goes, as you know, that at least we're doing something the UN isn't,' he said, insisting that the UN is capable of delivering aid at scale in Gaza.
Israel's US-backed Gaza aid plan may lead to second Nakba, UN agency chief warns Read More »
He also rejected the Israeli claim that the UN's aid gets looted by Hamas. 'This was never tested by evidence or an accountable process,' he said.
Griffiths said the GHF contravenes the established principle in humanitarian work that aid should not be distributed or controlled by one side of the conflict.
'I know personally in humanitarian operations across history, whether it's in Cambodia, Somalia, Ukraine or elsewhere, that you do not provide humanitarian aid under the auspices of one warring party, and you do not do it within a military environment.'
'This ain't humanitarian,' he said.
Griffiths added that the GHF is a means of displacing Palestinians to the south and eventually out of the country.
'It's a lure for displacement,' he said.
Additionally, Griffiths took aim at the GHF for failing to carry out any monitoring of where the aid goes.
'No humanitarian agency in the public domain, and I know directly, would ever get away with providing aid by shoving it off the back of a truck,' he told MEE.
'You need to continue the monitoring, third-party monitoring, to make sure that it goes to the people who you decided are the priority.'
The GHF is not equipped to monitor the destination of the aid because it does not have access across Gaza.
'This is a dereliction of humanitarian duty and responsibility, never mind principles.'
Griffiths added that the GHF should not be accepted as an aid distribution mechanism after any possible ceasefire. Otherwise, it would set a precedent for other conflicts, he said, including by the Russians in the occupied areas of Ukraine.
'This is a precedent which would be directly insisted on elsewhere.'
'I did a lot of work on Ukraine. The [Russians] keep pushing back on aid from the international system to come through to the people under their administration.'
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