Written by Tilourshita Thiagu
She was five months old and she died weighing less than she did when she was born.
Her name was Zainab Abu Halib. She died in Khan Younis, wrapped in a thin blanket, held in her mother’s arms as her body slowly shut down. Doctors at Nasser Hospital reported that she weighed under two kilograms when she died, more than a kilogram less than her birth weight. Her ribs pressed through fragile skin. Her ankle was thinner than her mother’s thumb. She did not cry. She did not move. Zainab did not die from shrapnel or burns. She died from hunger (Los Angeles Times, 2025).
And she is not the only one.
In Gaza, children are not dying because of a lack of global resources. They are dying because food is being kept out. Because trucks carrying aid are turned away. Because fuel is blocked. Because the entry of flour, formula, and medicine is being tightly controlled, delayed, or bombed. They are dying because starvation is being used as a weapon of war (BBC, 2025).
More than 100 people, most of them children, have already died from starvation-related causes in Gaza in 2025 alone (Time, 2025). Aid workers believe this number is an underestimate. Access to northern Gaza is so restricted that deaths are likely going unrecorded. Médecins Sans Frontières reports that cases of severe acute malnutrition among children under five have tripled in just two weeks (The Guardian, 2025). The World Health Organisation has warned that famine is imminent (WHO, 2025). The World Food Programme describes the humanitarian situation as catastrophic (WFP, n.d). There is no excuse left to give. Everyone knows what is happening. The difference is that most have chosen to look the other way.
Children in Gaza are eating birdseed, animal feed, and grass. Families drink contaminated water because bottled water is unaffordable or unavailable. Babies die not from trauma, but from emptiness. Mothers no longer produce breast milk because they themselves are starving (Reuters, 2024). Feeding tubes are in short supply. Fuel for incubators and medical devices has run out in many hospitals. Some infants die before they are even named (RNZ, 2025).
This is not an unfortunate consequence of war. This is a tactic.
The use of starvation as a weapon is explicitly prohibited under international law. Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions outlaws the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare (ICRC, 1977). Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines it as a war crime (ICC, 1998). The law is clear. And yet it is being broken, every hour, every day. What is happening in Gaza is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a legal, moral, and political crisis. One that implicates those ordering the siege, and those who remain silent as it continues.
In March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing reasonable grounds to believe they bear responsibility for the war crime of starvation (ICC, 2024). The decision was historic. It was also overdue. Gaza has been under a form of blockade for nearly two decades, but the situation since October 2023 has escalated into something far more horrific. Gaza has become a controlled starvation zone, where children’s survival depends not on nature, but on politics. And the international community, for all its declarations, has failed to stop it.
This is not about numbers. This is about lives. Zainab Abu Halib should have lived. She should have grown teeth, taken her first steps, and said her first words. Instead, she died in silence. Her death is not an isolated failure; it is the consequence of repeated choices to withhold food, fuel, and medical care from an entire population.
Diplomatic language has done nothing to stop it. Governments continue to speak in vague terms about “humanitarian corridors” and “tactical pauses,” as if starvation can be scheduled (CNN, 2025). Meanwhile, aid trucks sit at border crossings. Flour expires in warehouses. Convoys are bombed (Al Jazeera, 2024). And children die with nothing in their stomachs. The world is not witnessing a tragedy. It is enabling a crime.
New Zealand, like many nations, has called for humanitarian access and condemned violence (New Zealand Government, 2025). But words are not enough. As a country that claims to stand for human rights, international law, and peace, we must do more than issue statements; we must take concrete action. We must call for unrestricted humanitarian access, without exception or negotiation. We must support international investigations and prosecutions of those responsible for the starvation of civilians. We must increase funding for frontline organisations delivering aid. We must act.
To do nothing is to accept this. To do nothing is to make starvation normal.
Zainab is gone. Hundreds more will follow if nothing changes. These children are not collateral damage. They are not statistics. They are the proof that the world has mechanisms to prevent genocide and famine, but no political will to enforce them.
Starvation is not a natural disaster. It is not an accident. It is the result of conscious decisions to cut off food, delay convoys, bomb infrastructure, and deny access to the most basic necessities of life. It is a weapon. And it is being used right now, in front of all of us.
We will be asked, someday, what we did when Gaza’s children starved. Let us not say we watched.
References
Los Angeles Times. (2025, July 26). The latest child to starve to death in Gaza weighed less than when she was born. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-07-26/the-latest-child-to-starve-to-death-in-gaza-weighed-less-than-when-she-was-born
BBC News. (2025). Gaza: Starvation crisis deepens as aid fails to reach children. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz60x5v75p1o
Time. (2025, July 26). Gaza’s children are starving. Aid is not getting through. https://time.com/7305151/gaza-starvation-children-hunger-malnutrition-israel/
The Guardian. (2025, July 25). Severe malnutrition in under-5s in Gaza City tripled in two weeks, says charity MSF. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/25/severe-malnutrition-under-5s-gaza-city–tripled-two weeks-charity-msf
World Health Organization. (2025, May 12). People in Gaza starving, sick and dying as aid blockade continues. https://www.who.int/news/item/12-05-2025-people-in-gaza-starving–sick-and-dying-as-aid-blockade continues
World Food Programme. (n.d.). Palestine emergency. https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/palestine-emergency
Reuters. (2024, February 26). Bird feed, a loaf, a date wrapped in gauze: What children eat in Gaza. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/bird-feed-loaf-date-wrapped-gauze-what-children-eat-gaz a-2024-02-26/
Radio New Zealand. (2025). Desperate Gaza doctors cram several babies into one incubator as fuel crisis reaches critical point. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/566492/desperate-gaza-doctors-cram-several-babies-into-one-incu bator-as-fuel-crisis-reaches-critical-point
International Committee of the Red Cross. (1977). Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), Article 54. https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/api-1977/article-54
International Criminal Court. (1998). Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/Rome-Statute-eng.pdf
International Criminal Court. (2024, May). Situation in the State of Palestine: ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I rejects the State of Israel’s challenges. https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israels-challenges
CNN. (2025, July 27). Israel pausing operations in Gaza amid starvation crisis. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/27/middleeast/israel-pausing-operations-gaza-starvation-intl
Al Jazeera. (2024, December 12). Israeli drone attack on Gaza aid convoy kills 12 as hunger crisis deepens. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/12/israeli-drone-attack-on-gaza-aid-convoy-kills-12-as-hun ger-crisis-deepens
New Zealand Government. (2024). Ministerial statement to the House on the Middle East. https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/ministerial-statement-house-middle-east
