The United Nations employs stringent standards to declare a famine, and on Monday it issued a warning of a “catastrophic” food catastrophe for over a million people in Gaza.
It depends on the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which is used by its specialized organizations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP), both of which are situated in Rome.
The IPC compiles data, such as the number of households experiencing acute food insecurity, to create its Acute Food Insecurity scale, which is subsequently utilized to make decisions about resource distribution.
According to an IPC assessment released on Monday, over 1.1 million people, or half of Gaza’s population, are thought to be suffering from “catastrophic food insecurity”.
It did not declare famine, instead cautioning that it was “imminent” in the north.
