United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza is no longer confined to bombed homes and mass displacement, but now includes an engineered famine that is stripping people of the bare essentials of life. Speaking in New York, he said Israel, as the occupying power, bears direct responsibility under international law for ensuring the survival of civilians, responsibilities it is blatantly disregarding.

According to Guterres, famine in Gaza is not only about the absence of food but the deliberate collapse of every system that sustains life: destroyed hospitals, poisoned water supplies, the breakdown of power and supply chains, and aid convoys trapped at closed borders. He condemned the blocking of food and medicine as a tactic of war, warning that entire generations risk vanishing “not because of natural disaster, but because of choices made by human beings.”

Humanitarian agencies estimate that more than half a million people are already facing famine conditions. Harrowing images of skeletal children and desperate crowds chasing food trucks under fire have become symbols of what Guterres described as a “collective descent into inhumanity.” Israeli forces, he noted, have repeatedly opened fire on starving civilians scrambling for aid, turning the pursuit of bread into a deadly gamble. The weakest, the elderly, the wounded, children and orphans, are the first to succumb.

The Secretary-General denounced what he called an “ethical failure of historic proportions” by the international community, which has allowed Gaza to starve in plain sight. He demanded an immediate ceasefire, safe and unrestricted humanitarian access, and an end to the blockade that has reduced survival to a matter of brute strength. Without decisive action, he warned, history will remember this moment as one where famine was used as a weapon of war, in defiance of every principle of humanity and law.