“A Failure of Humanity:” IRC CEO on Impending Famine in Gaza

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: A U.N.-backed organization reports that half of Gaza, which is more than a million people, are on the brink of catastrophic hunger. The British Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, says the status quo is unsustainable. And earlier this week, the U.S. National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, had even harsher words.

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JAKE SULLIVAN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Instead of pause to reevaluate where things stand in the campaign and what adjustments are needed to achieve long-term success, instead of a focus on stabilizing the areas of Gaza that Israel is cleared so that Hamas would not regenerate and retake territory that Israel has already cleared, the Israeli government is now talking about launching a major military operation in Gaza. More than a million people have taken refuge in Rafah. They went from Gaza City to Khan Younis, and then to Rafah. They have nowhere else to go.

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AMANPOUR: So, the clear frustration of the Biden administration and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to talk behind closed doors with Republicans in Congress. Now, the International Rescue Committee calls the imminent famine in Gaza “a profound failure of humanity and entirely preventable.” David Miliband is president and CEO of the IRC. He’s a former British Foreign Secretary. And he himself is a child of Holocaust refugees. David Miliband, welcome back to our program.

DAVID MILIBAND, PRESIDENT AND CEO, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE: Thank you, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: So, the WHO, you all, everybody is really trying to sound the alarm of what is, we can see by the pictures, this impending famine. Who do you blame for this?

MILIBAND: Well, first of all, let’s just be absolutely clear that the threat of imminent famine described by the United Nations, is not someone, an official in New York, writing a press release. The international phase classification system is a detailed, technocratic, quite small-C conservative look at the facts on the ground. They describe, as Secretary Blinken said, a million people at level five, that is famine level. The rest of the population, level four is considered an emergency, level three, a crisis. So, 2.2 million people don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And the million who are at risk of famine, imminent risk of famine, in level five represent the fastest degradation, the fastest acceleration of a hunger crisis that’s ever been seen. Now, how do you explain that to get you to your question? This is about very straightforward decisions that are being made on the ground about the number of crossing points, about the number trucks that allow to go through crossing points. About what aid, above all food aid, is allowed to go on the trucks to go across the crossing points. About the transit of trucks once they are inside Gaza, because you’ll know a World Food Programme convoy was turned back in the middle of the night inside Gaza last week. So, you’ve got a series of impediments, blockages, restrictions being put in place on lorries carrying the most basic humanitarian aid. And it’s not getting through to the people who need it. That’s why you’re ending up in the situation where. What a frankly fourth and fifth best alternatives, dropping aid from the sky, building a pier that’s going to be online in another six weeks, that won’t help the people at imminent risk of famine now. What they need is different decisions about crossing points, about truck numbers, about what goes in the trucks.

AMANPOUR: So, those decisions are in the hands of the Israeli government and the IDF. The U.N. says it has enough food sitting in those trucks that you’re talking about to feed the 2 million people plus inside Gaza. What possible reason could a democracy at war have for denying the basic elements of survival?

MILIBAND: Well, no good reason has been given. There’s one part of the argument which I think is important to get clear, which is that some of the trucks are being turned back because of allegations that some of the items on a truck might be “dual use.” In other words, they might have civilian use as well as military use. Let’s be clear what kind of items we’re talking about. A pair of scissors for use in a health center. My own organization has doctors, orthopedic surgeons working in one of the hospitals, not the Al-Shifa Hospital, another hospital in Gaza, but they lack the most basic, the saline drips, the saline at all, the most basic implements with which to do their work. And when a pair of scissors gets found on a truck, the whole truck gets turned back. So, we’re talking about a really serious set of very localized decisions, but also bigger decisions about the number of crossing points and how they’re used.

AMANPOUR: I want a place — just so that our viewers and you also really hear from at least one person there of the desperate hunger that they face.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): What has this child done to suffer from hunger? I cannot find him milk for five shekels or a packet of milk from the agency. There, the normal milk is for 150. There is no work. There is no food. No drinks. We are eating plants. We started eating pigeon food, donkey food. We are like the animals.

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AMANPOUR: I saw you shaking your head. I mean, this reference to them eating animal food is shocking still every time we hear it.

MILIBAND: Yes. And remember, the international phase classification report that came out the day before yesterday, 25 children have died of starvation already. This is not about rhetoric. This is not actually about politics. This is about human survival. And that’s why it’s a failure of humanity.