With more than half of Gaza’s farmland damaged by conflict and ongoing blockades restricting imports, Action Against Hunger, a global nonprofit leader in the movement to end hunger, today announced a significant scale-up in its support of local farmers.

From Action Against Hunger, regarding Israel and Gaza: “We are experiencing an emergency like I have never seen before,” trying to help two million people. All aid is insufficient, people wait for weeks for surgery, those who get it risk infection due to lack of antibiotics and drugs, food is hard to get, and sanitation involves hours-long waits to use latrines and wash. The UN says 80% of households in northern Gaza and half of those displaced in the South are experiencing days without food.

Since 7 October, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has significantly deteriorated due to escalated hostilities. Compounded by 16 years of blockade and multiple previous rounds of devastating escalations in violence, the Gaza Strip now grapples with catastrophic water, sanitation, and hygiene needs essential to the survival of its 2.3 million inhabitants, of whom half are children.

With conflict on the rise globally, hunger is a grim reality for millions around the world.

A war zone isn't known just for violent deaths but for lingering ones caused by the effects of starvation. The world's aid groups are working to mitigate the danger as it surges in several spots on the globe at once. "There are too many crises and not enough interest, and the arguments have not been made strongly enough for Haiti," says Martine Villeneuve, country director in Haiti for Action Against Hunger, an international aid group.

“It’s often that a child is extremely malnourished, and then they get sick and that virus is ultimately what causes that death,” said Heather Stobaugh, a malnutrition expert at Action Against Hunger, an aid group. “But they would not have died if they were not malnourished.” While cautioning that it was difficult to say what had happened without more information, Dr. Stobaugh said that malnutrition in pregnant mothers and the lack of formula could easily have led to the deaths of infants, who are the most vulnerable to extreme malnutrition.