Aid airdrops will lessen hunger in Gaza: UN rapporteur

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - The UN special rapporteur on the right to food stressed Friday that aid airdrops will not lessen the hunger in the Gaza Strip.

"You use airdrops as a measure of last resort when you're desperate. It is incredibly expensive and ineffective," Michael Fakhri said at a meeting in Geneva with the Association of Accredited Correspondents at the UN (ACANU).

"The amount that was airdropped will do very little to alleviate hunger, malnutrition and do nothing to slow down famine," he said. "Also, it can create chaos. You're throwing aid into people who have been starving and have been denied humanitarian access. This will create chaos predictably."

Stressing that Israel has been "intentionally starving" Gazans, he said: "Famine is already occurring, if not around the corner."

"We've never seen an entire civilian population made to go hungry so quickly and so completely in modern history, and people's health is rapidly declining," he said.

He accused the Human Rights Council of "doing nothing.”

"There's been nothing in here. So, we have a genocide, we have a starvation, we have a historic degree of speed of hunger, and we've seen our institutions fail."

"The world will never be the same, the UN will not be the same, the international law will never be the same after Gaza," he said.

"I can only hope it will be better, but I don't know if it will be, it could be worse after this," he stated.

Fakhri urged states to impose arms embargoes and economic sanctions on Israel.

Israel launched a destructive military campaign in Gaza in response to an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group, Hamas, which Tel Avis said killed less than 1,200 people.

More than 30,000 Palestinians have since been killed, the majority of the 2.3 million population has been displaced and many are starving amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe.