Gaza: Starving the Innocent, Starving the Conscience of Humanity

©️ WFP/Jonathan Dumont | Hot meals are distributed to children in Khan Younis, Gaza.

“Fourteen thousand babies could die in the next 48 hours in Gaza.”
– United Nations, May 20, 2025

When I read this line, something ruptured deep inside me. Fourteen thousand babies—not numbers, not statistics, but breathing, crying, nursing newborns—are being consigned to death in the very first hours of life. How does one carry that unbearable weight in their chest without collapsing?

I am not in Gaza. I write this from a place of safety. Yet, I feel consumed by this horror. As a human being, as a woman, as someone who has worked with hungry children, and as someone who believes in the sanctity of life, I cannot unsee what is happening. This is not a crisis. This is not collateral damage. This is genocide and starvation is its chosen weapon.

Manufactured Starvation: A Deliberate Crime

Since October 2023, Gaza has been under relentless siege. Bombs have flattened hospitals, schools, refugee shelters, and homes. But far more insidious than the explosions is the silence of empty plates and the cries of starving children.

Hospitals no longer function. Neonatal units have no electricity. Incubators lie cold. Mothers, themselves starving, cannot produce milk. There is no formula. No clean water. No medicine. No humanitarian trucks. As OCHA, WHO, and Médecins Sans Frontières report, the entire health system has collapsed

This is not a famine caused by drought or disaster. This is engineered hunger—an intentional, sustained act of war.

And the world watches.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines the starvation of civilians as a war crime when used deliberately as a method of warfare (Article 8.2(b)(xxv)) UN Special Rapporteurs have already warned that Israel’s actions may amount to genocide. The blockade of aid, targeting of health infrastructure, and systematic destruction of food and water systems are not unfortunate by-products of war. They are the strategy.

Children as the Battlefield

Gaza has one of the youngest populations in the world. Over half are children. These are not collateral victims—they are the primary targets. Homes, schools, hospitals, and UN shelters meant to protect them are being destroyed. It is their bodies that bear the brunt of this siege. These children do not know a life without drones, without sirens, without hunger. Their futures are being shattered before they begin. These children are growing up without food, without safety, and without parents. Their lullabies are airstrikes. Their futures have been buried beneath rubble.

A child who has not eaten in three days cannot dream. She cannot learn, resist, or recover. She survives barely through instincts alone. These are not just bodies being destroyed. But even survival has been stolen. For those who live through the bombs and starvation, the trauma will stay for life. These wounds—mental, physical, generational cannot be healed by ceasefires alone. These are futures being stolen.

I have seen malnutrition up close in India’s rural communities. I have seen the impact of poverty on children. But what I see now in Gaza is something far more sinister: hunger used as a weapon of erasure. Of intimidation. Of genocide. A violence that does not explode, but lingers silently killing, slowly extinguishing life and hope.

The Collapse of Humanitarian and Legal Institutions

How did we arrive at a moment where the death of a starving baby is reduced to a political footnote?

What is happening in Gaza today is not simply a breakdown of humanitarian access it is a collapse of the very institutions meant to safeguard life during war. The silence of powerful governments and multilateral bodies is not neutrality. It is complicity.

UNRWA, a lifeline for over a million Gazans even before the war, has been defunded and discredited at the exact moment it is most needed. Humanitarian convoys carrying food, medicine, and fuel are routinely denied access or bombed. Aid workers and journalists protected under international law are being killed. UN shelters are no longer safe zones, but targets.

Despite repeated warnings from UNICEF, WHO, and the World Food Programme about the imminent starvation of children, no coordinated international response has emerged. The International Criminal Court drags its feet. The UN Security Council remains paralyzed by vetoes and political double standards.

If the international legal system cannot stop the slow killing of children through starvation, if it cannot protect humanitarian workers or ensure aid delivery then it is not just failing. It is being rendered irrelevant.

Are the Geneva Conventions now just ceremonial texts? Are international laws only enforced when politically convenient?

The institutions we built after the horrors of the 20th century intended to protect civilians, uphold human rights, and prevent genocide, are now being tested in Gaza. And they are failing that test.

This is not the failure of law itself, but of the global political will to uphold it.

A Global Pattern of Impunity

What we see in Gaza today is part of a disturbing global pattern. In my September 2024 paper The Weaponization of Food, I documented how state and non-state actors around the world have increasingly used hunger as a deliberate tool of control, punishment, and ethnic targeting. In Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia and Ukraine, food systems have been attacked, agricultural lands scorched, aid convoys blocked, and hunger turned into policy.

This is not new. But the silence around it is growing louder. The destruction of food systems is no longer a by-product of war—it is part of the war strategy itself. The same mechanisms we now see in Gaza—sieges, blockades, defunding humanitarian agencies, targeting food storage—are tactics that have gone unpunished elsewhere. The world’s failure to act has normalized this cruelty.

When food is weaponized, it doesn’t just kill bodies. It kills hope, culture, dignity, and memory. And when the international community does nothing, it signals that such tactics are permissible.

What Kind of Humanity Are We Becoming?

We must ask ourselves: What kind of humanity are we becoming?

Is this the age when human suffering becomes another algorithmic scroll on a distracted feed? Have children’s lives become less real than political alignments? Where is the outrage from those who demanded humanitarian corridors for Ukraine, but fall silent when Gaza bleeds?

History will not ask us how complicated the situation was. History will not ask us how complex the politics were. It will ask whether we spoke up, whether we acted, whether we cared and who looked away

The Urgent Imperative to Act

In moments like these, helplessness is a luxury we cannot afford. We must speak. We must act. Silence is not safety. Silence is consent.

We must demand:

  • An immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
  • Unimpeded humanitarian access, monitored by international observers.
  • The restoration and full protection of UNRWA and neutral aid organizations.
  • Recognition of starvation warfare as a prosecutable war crime and enforcement of the Geneva Conventions.
  • Accelerated ICC investigations and emergency action by the UN General Assembly.
  • The creation of a global “Children of Gaza Rehabilitation Fund” focused on long-term trauma healing, education, psychosocial care and dignity.

Let there be no mistake: this is not a call for charity. It is a call for justice. And justice must begin with children.

Conclusion: Starving the Conscience of the World

Gaza is more than a place. It is a moral mirror. And what we see in it today should haunt us.

If we normalize the murder of children by starvation, if we allow humanitarian law to be twisted into impunity, then we forfeit not only our moral standing but our humanity itself.

The children of Gaza are watching. And someday, history will too.

Will we be remembered as those who stood up or as those who scrolled past?

Let our answer be: We did not stay silent. We did not look away.

We remembered our conscience and acted.

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References

Sudha S. Reddy

Sudha S. Reddy is a member of the Advisory Board of the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS). She founded and directs the Eco Foundation for Sustainable Alternatives (EFSA) based in Bangalore, India, focusing on the holistic empowerment and sustainable development of the underprivileged and marginalized rural, urban and indigenous communities, with an emphasis on women, children and youth at the grassroots through direct intervention. Sudha has more than 25 years of experience in social action and the development sector in India and worldwide, academic researching and teaching on capacity building and organizational development, advocacy and campaign.

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