HQ Team
May 14, 2025: UN relief chief Tom Fletcher has told the Security Council that the ambassadors must finally act decisively “to prevent genocide” and ensure respect for international law in Gaza, where it has been 10 weeks since humanitarian aid has been delivered.
Every one of the 2.1 million people in Gaza faces famine conditions, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Fletcher told the UN Security Council in New York.
Fletcher said the international community must reflect on what it will tell future generations about action taken “to stop the 21st century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza.”
Israel imposed a humanitarian aid blockade on Gaza on March 2, cutting off food, medical supplies, and other aid.
Israel says the blockade, along with the military’s expansion of its bombardment of Gaza, is intended to pressure Hamas to release hostages held in the enclave – but international organisations say it violates international law, with some accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
57 children die
Since the aid blockade began, 57 children have reportedly died from the effects of malnutrition, according to a WHO report that quoted the Ministry of Health.
If the situation persists, nearly 71,000 children under the age of five are expected to be acutely malnourished over the next 11 months.
Fletcher said the world would “surely all claim to have been against it? Or pretend that we thought a more brutal military offensive had more chance of bringing the hostages home than the negotiations, which brought so many hostages home?
“Maybe some will recall that in a transactional world, we had other priorities. Or maybe we will use those empty words: “We did all we could.”
Civilians in Gaza have again been forcibly displaced and confined into ever-shrinking spaces, he said, as 70% of the territory is either within Israeli-militarised zones or under displacement orders.
A few remaining hospitals are overwhelmed, and medics cannot stem the trauma and the spread of disease.
‘Death has a sound’
“I can tell you from having visited what’s left of Gaza’s medical system that death on this scale has a sound and a smell that does not leave you,” he said. “As one hospital worker described it, ‘children scream as we peel burnt fabric from their skin.’”
The UN could save “thousands of survivors, but Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians,” he said.
“It is bad enough that the blockade continues. How do you react when Israeli Ministers boast about it? Or when attacks on humanitarian workers and violations of the UN’s privileges and immunities continue, along with restrictions on international and non-governmental organisations.”
Israel has clear obligations under international humanitarian law, and as the occupying power, it must agree to aid and facilitate it. “For anyone still pretending to be in any doubt, the Israeli-designed distribution modality is not the answer,” he said, adding that the plan “makes starvation a bargaining chip.”
“It is a cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement,” he told ambassadors. “If any of that still matters, have no part in it.”
‘Collective failure’
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is now considering whether a genocide is taking place there, and “will weigh the testimony we have shared. But it will be too late,” he said.
Previous reviews of the UN’s conduct in cases of large-scale violations of international human rights and humanitarian law – reports on Myanmar, 2019, Sri Lanka, 2012, Srebrenica and Rwanda, both in 1999 – “pointed to our collective failure to speak to the scale of violations while they were committed.”
“So, for those killed and those whose voices are silenced: what more evidence do you need now? Will you act decisively to prevent genocide and to ensure respect for international humanitarian law? Or will you say instead that “we did all we could?”
Fletcher urged Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups to release all hostages immediately and unconditionally, and to stop putting civilians at risk during military operations.
“And for those who will not survive what we fear is coming – in plain sight – it will be no consolation to know that future generations will hold us in this chamber to account. But they will,” he said.
Food shortages
WHO’s representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Dr Rik Peeperkorn, said that Israel’s aid embargo has left only enough supplies to treat 500 children with acute malnutrition – “a fraction of the urgent need.”
“People are trapped in this cycle where a lack of diversified food, malnutrition and disease fuel each other,” he warned.
UN figures showed that one in five people in Gaza – 500,000 – faces starvation, while the entire 2.1 million population of the Strip is subjected to prolonged food shortages. “This is one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time,” Dr Peeperkorn said.
