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save the children
Gaza Children Without 'Strength to Speak or Even Cry,' Says Aid Group Chief
"When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully," the CEO of Save the Children told a United Nations Security Council meeting this week.
Aug 28, 2025
Inger Ashing, the CEO of Save the Children, delivered an urgent plea for action to end the Israeli-created humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, which she described in graphic terms.
Ashing told a United Nations Security Council meeting on Wednesday that there can be no doubt that Gaza is facing a full-blown famine that will result in mass starvation unless the international community steps in to end it.
"When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully," she said. "This, in simple terms, is what famine is."
Ashing then described how Palestinian children's bodies are eating their own muscles and organs just to stay alive amid systemic hunger imposed by Israel's military blockade.
"Children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony," she said. "They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away."
Cindy McCain, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, put out a video statement Thursday morning in which she said that Gaza was "at a breaking point" due to mass hunger.
"Half a million people here in Gaza are starving, and many more are on the edge," she said. "Famine is expected in the coming weeks if food doesn't reach the thousands of starving families here fast enough. The desperation is overwhelming."
McCain emphasized that the World Food Programme can reach these starving civilians and save lives, but added that it first needed "safe routes and sustained access" to Gaza to make it happen.
"We must deliver at the scale this crisis demands," she said.
Ashing and McCain's pleas for action came less than a week after the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) declared a famine in Gaza that it warned was projected to get even worse in the coming weeks.
"Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis," the IPC stated. "Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58%). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly."
The Gaza Health Ministry has estimated that 317 people in Gaza, including 121 children, have so far died from severe hunger as a result of the Israeli blockade.
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Over 40% of Pregnant, Breastfeeding Women Who Visit Save the Children's Gaza Clinics Are Malnourished
"These are realities no mother should ever have to face," said one Save the Children official.
Aug 04, 2025
Save the Children on Monday released a report outlining the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
The organization said that 43% of pregnant and breastfeeding women who showed up to its clinics in Gaza last month were malnourished, which represented a threefold increase since March, when the Israeli military imposed a total siege on the area.
"Since April, staff at Save the Children's two primary healthcare centers operating in Gaza have reported monthly increases in the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women found to be malnourished, with food, water and fuel almost entirely unavailable," said Save the Children. "Poor nutrition and malnutrition during pregnancy can cause anaemia, preeclampsia, hemorrhage, and death in mothers, lead to stillbirth, low birthweight, stunted growth, and developmental delays for children."
Instead of breastfeeding, said Save the Children, many mothers are resorting to giving their babies water mixed with ground chickpeas or tahini, which the organization noted were poor substitutes for breast milk or baby formula.
"Mothers are arriving at our clinics hungry, exhausted, and terrified their babies won't survive," said Ahmad Alhendawi, Save the Children's regional director for the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. "Some are asking for formula so their baby can still be fed if they die. These are realities no mother should ever have to face."
Alhendawi went on to say that "extreme stress can disrupt breastfeeding" and that "displacement and hunger in Gaza are taking a devastating toll on all mothers" in the region. Save the Children then called upon the Israeli government to lift its blockade of aid supplies into Gaza and give international humanitarian organizations license to help millions of people currently facing acute starvation and other health threats.
Save the Children is not the first organization to point out the crisis facing pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza.
Doctors Without Borders last month similarly reported that "the number of people enrolled for malnutrition" at its Gaza City clinic "has quadrupled since May 18, while rates of severe malnutrition in children under 5 have tripled in the last two weeks alone." In all, Doctors Without Borders estimated that 25% of children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding women at the clinic were malnourished.
Amande Bazerolle, the Doctors Without Borders head of emergency response in Gaza, accused the Israeli government of deliberately inflicting starvation on the people living there.
"What we are seeing is unconscionable; an entire population being deliberately cut off from food and water, all while the Israeli forces commit daily massacres as people scramble for scraps of food at distribution sites," Bazerolle said. "Any shred of humanity in Gaza has been wiped out in the ongoing genocide."
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100+ Aid Groups Decry Global Inaction as Israeli Siege Starves Gaza
"States can and must save lives before there are none left to save."
Jul 23, 2025
A coalition of more than 100 aid organizations issued a dire warning Wednesday about worsening humanitarian conditions on the ground in the Gaza Strip, where starvation continues to spread under the Israeli government's suffocating blockade.
The groups, including Save the Children and Oxfam, called on the international community to pressure Israel to "open all land crossings; restore the full flow of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel through a principled, U.N.-led mechanism; end the siege, and agree to a cease-fire now."
"Just outside Gaza, in warehouses—and even within Gaza itself—tons of food, clean water, medical supplies, shelter items, and fuel sit untouched with humanitarian organizations blocked from accessing or delivering them," the groups said in a joint statement. "The government of Israel's restrictions, delays, and fragmentation under its total siege have created chaos, starvation, and death."
The aid groups said their colleagues in Gaza are among those impacted. "With supplies now totally depleted," they said, "humanitarian organizations are witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes."
The statement was released amid harrowing evidence that the manufactured hunger emergency in Gaza is rapidly intensifying, with at least 21 Palestinian children dying of starvation over just the past several days. Since May, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food aid, mostly near hubs run by the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). A spokesperson for the Trump State Department declared Tuesday that GHF operations have "been a tremendous success" despite the repeated massacres at its sites and still-spreading famine across the enclave.
"Palestinians are trapped in a cycle of hope and heartbreak, waiting for assistance and cease-fires, only to wake up to worsening conditions," the aid coalition said Wednesday. "It is not just physical torment, but psychological. Survival is dangled like a mirage. The humanitarian system cannot run on false promises. Humanitarians cannot operate on shifting timelines or wait for political commitments that fail to deliver access."
The groups decried inadequate deals—such as the European Union's recent agreement with Israel to increase the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza—and "symbolic gestures" like food airdrops as "a smokescreen for inaction."
In the absence of "real change on the ground," the groups said, "children starve while waiting for promises that never arrive."
"They cannot replace states' legal and moral obligations to protect Palestinian civilians and ensure meaningful access at scale," the coalition said. "States can and must save lives before there are none left to save."
The aid groups' warnings echoed those of U.N. officials such as World Food Program emergency director Ross Smith, who said Tuesday that the hunger crisis in Gaza "has reached new and astonishing levels of desperation.
"We have a third of the population who are not eating for multiple days in a row—this includes women and children," said Smith. "We see severe, acute malnutrition surging. Almost 100,000 women and children are suffering from severe, acute malnutrition and need treatment as soon as possible."
"People are dying from lack of humanitarian assistance every day," Smith added. "And we are seeing this escalate, day by day."
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