Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) stated that the world remains a silent witness to one of the bloodiest and most disgraceful chapters in modern human history, as a collective tragedy unfolds in Gaza, where women, children, the elderly, and the sick are denied food and medicine. Those who risk their lives to secure food from aid centres face humiliation or are killed.
AOHR UK stressed that the famine imposed on Gaza today is not the result of natural circumstances but a deliberate, systematic, and intentional policy, part of the ongoing genocide and humiliation of an entire population.
AOHR UK explained that in the past two days, the number of deaths from deliberate starvation rose to 19 people, including infants and children, who were not only victims of bombardment but also victims of being deprived of the basic means of survival. Exhausted and collapsing in the streets, they are taken to hospitals, where emergency teams are forced to make horrific choices: prioritising cases with higher chances of survival while others are left to their fate due to an acute shortage of essential medical supplies and nutrients.
Among the starvation victims was four-year-old Razan Abu Zaher, who spent half her life under siege and the other half under relentless genocide (her death recorded due to severe malnutrition at al-Shifa Hospital). Also lost was four-month-old infant Yahya al-Najjar, who arrived at the hospital in a severely weakened state and passed away without finding anything to sustain him.
AOHR UK reported that famine and despair have driven desperate civilians to seek aid from centres run by the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which, with American backing, has replaced the UN and its agencies in distributing aid. These four distribution points have turned daily into execution sites, where live ammunition is fired at hungry civilians crammed into suffocating lines surrounded on all sides. This bloody scene has become a daily routine, surpassing even the darkest dystopian dramas like “The Hunger Games”. Since 27 May, at least 966 civilians have been killed while attempting to secure food, including dozens of women and children, with 91 killed in just the past two days.
AOHR UK noted that the UN’s failure to protect the humanitarian system, and its acquiescence to being sidelined in favour of actors complicit in violations, represents a resounding international disgrace and reveals the erosion of moral values. Meanwhile, the United States has shown blind allegiance—not stopping at silence but extending to justification, financial, military, and political support, and providing cover for everything Israel is doing on the ground, including militarising aid distribution and killing those in need.
AOHR UK stressed that the continuation of this situation without a genuine response from world governments means that the international community is in its worst state of paralysis and moral bankruptcy. All statements issued by organisations and bodies, no matter how strong their language, are effectively meaningless, as they do not feed the hungry or protect them from bullets.
AOHR UK issued an open call to the peoples of the world, especially the Global South, and to states that have not sold their positions in the marketplace of international political hypocrisy—from South Africa to Ireland, Chile, and Brazil—not to suffice with moral condemnation but to take tangible steps at the legal and diplomatic levels. What is happening in Gaza—mass starvation and execution in front of aid trucks—cannot be left to appeals alone but requires sovereign actions starting with recalling ambassadors, freezing relations, and establishing effective international mechanisms capable of breaking this siege and saving hundreds of thousands from starvation.
AOHR UK called upon unions, professional associations, student and academic bodies worldwide to intensify their efforts and pressure their governments to take the necessary measures to ensure the entry of food and medicine under UN supervision and without preconditions.
AOHR UK further urged Arab and Islamic populations to pressure the official structures that remain deafeningly silent about these events, no conferences, not even statements condemning the ongoing crime. The deliberate starvation being committed necessitates exceptional thinking to confront this unprecedented crime. Member states of the UN General Assembly must convene an emergency special session, not in New York but on Gaza’s border in Rafah, Egypt, to adopt decisions and measures that the UN Security Council has failed to take.
