GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins this year amidst a persistent food security crisis throughout the Middle East and North Africa driven by conflict, economic challenges, and climate change, a toxic combination pushing millions to the edge, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) said on Monday.
“We get into Ramadan with the region with the worst food crisis in its recent history in the Gaza Strip,” says WFP regional director for Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe Corinne Fleischer.
“At the same time, in other countries, protracted conflicts and economic crises are transforming the purposeful religious practice of fasting – the cornerstone of the holy month of Ramadan – to be a harsh daily reality for millions of people.”
She pointed out that more than 40 million people across the region experience acute levels of food insecurity, including more than 11.7 million people – many of them refugees and asylum seekers – at emergency or worse levels of food insecurity (IPC 4 & 5) in six countries.
“Six months into the Gaza crisis, the embattled strip’s entire population is now in desperate need of food assistance, with more than half a million people facing catastrophic hunger and starvation (IPC Phase 5) and the risk of famine increasing by the day.”
The Gaza Strip has been subjected to a five-month Israeli aggression that has driven around 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people from their homes and pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine. The health ministry said that at least 31,112 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.
