Vinita speaks with Hilal Elver, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and current research professor of Global Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, about the looming famine in Gaza after months of Israeli attacks.
On Monday, the European Union's foreign policy chief accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war and provoking famine in Gaza. They were some of the strongest words against Israel we have heard from a western power about the situation in Gaza since October. They come on the heels of a UN-backed report that warns that more than one million people — half of Gaza’s population — face catastrophic starvation conditions. The report goes on to say that without an immediate ceasefire and a major influx of food and to areas cut off by fighting, famine and mass death in Gaza are imminent. Scholars of famine say this is, in fact, the worst food deprivation they have observed in war time since the Second World War. And according to international law, intentional starvation of a population is a war crime. In this episode, Vinita breaks down the use of hunger as a tool of war in Gaza with Hilal Elver, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and research professor of Global Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.
THIS IS AN UNEDITED, UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT
PULL QUOTE
Hilal Elver: Israel is deliberately keeping the humanitarian aid as difficult as possible. And we are fighting with time right now, we have very little time. And we have 1 million people, 50 people are in severe danger. So, my guess is they are trying to Make them live, but there's no place to live.
INTRO
Vinita Srivastava: Earlier this week, the European Union accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
Clip: This famine is not a natural disaster. It's entirely man made. Israel is provoking famine. It is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Yes, starvation is used as a weapon of war.
Vinita Srivastava: That was the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Joseph Borrell talking on Monday. Israel denies these allegations, which are some of the strongest words we have heard about the situation in Gaza from a Western power since October.
They were spoken on the heels of a UN backed report that warns that more than one million people, half of Gaza's population, are projected to face catastrophic starvation conditions In other words, famine is looming. The report, which was put together by agencies from 19 countries, including the Canadian International Development Agency, goes on to say that without an immediate ceasefire and a surge of food to areas cut off by fighting, Mass death in Gaza is imminent.
After reading the report, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres had this to say.
Clip: We must act now to prevent the unthinkable, the unacceptable, and the unjustifiable
Vinita Srivastava: Scholars of famine say that this is, in fact, the worst food deprivation they have observed in war since the Second World War.
And under international law, intentional starvation of a population is considered a war crime. That's a lot to take in. I know. But we're going to try and break it all down for you today with someone who really knows the issue. Hilal Elver. Is the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, a position she held for six years from 2014 to 2020.
She's also a research professor of global studies at the university of California, Santa Barbara, and the global distinguished fellow at the Resnick food law and policy center at UCLA law school. Hilal currently serves on the committee of experts at the world committee of food security and nutrition.
Welcome Hilal.
INTERVIEW
Hilal Elver: Thank you.
Vinita Srivastava: As a former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, how would you describe what you are seeing in Gaza?
Hilal Elver: I mean, it's very difficult to describe because whole world is talking about imminent, horrifying, humanitarian, uh, humanity's catastrophe, especially Secretary General. He was saying, it's not a humanitarian catastrophe, it's a humanity's catastrophe.
Since October 7, the world has never been such an intensive kind of action against the civilian population in the small parts of the world. You know, this we are talking about very small area, which is Gaza Strip. And since 2007, this area was under siege anyway. And more than 50 percent of 60, 70 Gazans were under humanitarian aid since 2007.
And thinking about it recently. This become even more horrific than we can even imagine. Gradually, maybe the Western countries are trying to understand the severity of the situation. But when it started in October 7, of course, nothing had started in October 7. That's also the important thing. It's not a vacuum.
Yes, it was a terrible attack. But the collective punishment is unheard because 100 percent of Gazans, women, children, young, old, Hamas, non Hamas, everyone is under the same situation and there is no way to escape. These people are going from north to south, south to north again, and the Gaza divided to two pieces, north and south.
It was already extremely crowded area. That the human catastrophe, it's not only starvation, not only famine, but the health impacts and people lose everything and their home and their small, tiny gardens. It was a terrible case before and now it's beyond our imagination.
Vinita Srivastava: You mentioned that, I think it's the UN Secretary General said, this is It's not a humanitarian crisis, but it's a humanities crisis.
Can you explain that just a little bit?
Hilal Elver: Well, Secretary General from the day first was trying to do the ceasefire, and actually he went to Egyptian gate and in order to get into Gaza, the Israeli government didn't allow him to come into the Gaza. This is unheard. We know Israel was not very cooperative with human rights councils.
No special rapporteur on occupied territories was able to enter to Gaza or West Bank. But Secretary General, I mean, that was a kind of, It's hard to believe rejection of the international order by Israel. And also, what Secretary General is trying to say, the world somehow divided to two camps. And the Western countries, basically European, United States, and the Commonwealth countries are actually blindly supporting Israel's self defense, which is not a self defense.
This is beyond the self defense. And the global South is completely unified. Uh, try to stop what's happening in Palestine. This is a new kind of world order that we are seeing. That's why I think the humanities crisis, he tries to say, is why we don't use our humanity but what we think about our geopolitical interests.
I can understand Israel's founding was also important after the humanitarian catastrophe. Now we are completely seeing historical problem repeating again this time, but victims and perpetrators become completely different. That's a very interesting and also very sad story, I think.
Vinita Srivastava: Let's talk about this report on Monday.
What's important about this new report, do you think?
Hilal Elver: So, in December, the earlier report by IPC, they made exactly the same language. They said, listen, you should stop the war, or you should allow a kind of humanitarian aid in order to protect people going to severe hunger. According to this report, the report just came yesterday.
NIPC became again some kind of important news event. From December to yesterday, March 18, the situation become more and more serious in a very short period of time. Now, either emergency or catastrophe. And catastrophe is 50 percent. They divided the Gaza north and south. North, something has to be done before May.
For the North, and something has to be done before July for the South. These are all technical information. How many people stays in 24 hours with, with, uh, Only one meal, or how many children, malnutritious, between 0 to 2, 0 to 5, all these kind of figures, technical figures, definitions, and also has to be announced by the United Nations there is a famine here.
So now they are in the situation to make it announcement. But this is also problematic because these announcements become geopolitical issue because the governments don't want to do this. Possibly they say, oh, they died because they did have some conditions, that combination of justice. But in Gaza, conditions means unhealthy situation, no clean water, no any kind of sanitation, no hospital.
If you get a kind of diarrhea. There is no medicine, and these children die from not being able to have food or this communicable disease that easily be treated if there was a medicine. So in war situation, these conditions become together. For instance, humanitarian aid. Very strangely, in Gaza, become subject of the negotiation.
Humanitarian aid cannot be subject of the negotiation. When they were talking about the ceasefire, all humanitarian aid issues were coming. This has to be unconditional. Until end of October, Israel never let even one truck to Gaza. Then, because of the international, uh, pressure, they started to, uh, give, uh, the humanitarian aid permission, but what they were doing, very cumbersome investigation, hours and days trucks were, uh, staying there.
For instance, if you find the one thing that Israel didn't accept, let's say tents, tents are not allowed because there's a metal part. They don't want to enter Gaza. If there's a tent in the humanitarian aid, they return completely entire aid. So it is extremely cumbersome, extremely arbitrary investigation by Israel.
Israel is deliberately keeping the humanitarian aid as difficult as possible. And we are fighting with time right now. We have a very little time, and we have 1 million people, 50 percent are in severe danger. So my guess is they are trying to. Make them leave, but there's no place to live. And if they leave, they will not be come back again.
Everyone knows about it. So what, what could be done?
Vinita Srivastava: Well, you're talking about the delivery of aid and including the too small and the inefficient airdrops that we've all seen on TV and online and the violence that we've seen at food distribution And right now the United States has funded basically a makeshift port, they're saying that.
They're going to create a makeshift port to bring ships in to bring aid. I'm wondering what you think of that approach.
Hilal Elver: First of all, it takes too long. There's no time for three months. I mean, I, I have no idea what they are talking about. It's very difficult to do it. Very dysfunctional, all the humanitarian aid organization repeatedly told the United States government, you cannot do this air, the food aid, because it's so dysfunctional, so impossible.
And scale wise, for Gaza? It will not work. And also United States, strangely enough, in one hand, they are trying to drop food at the same time they are giving still military aid to Israel without any condition. So these two kind of hypocritical policies never gonna help. There's a domestic election coming.
And many American people, even the Democratic Party voters, more than 60%, 70 percent of them, clearly they won't cease fire. But Biden administration somehow, They are trying to make a kind of make up version of these helicopters or the parachuting. Some children died and they said, no, no, no, they didn't die because of this.
So that's a kind of dysfunctional humanitarian aid. There's a bunch of places in Gaza you can enter. They only keep the Egyptian gate. That could have done other places. Easily, humanitarian aid come in, but they don't allow them because they don't want this issue will be solved.
Vinita Srivastava: It's sort of mind blowing that in the middle of all of this, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, was defunded because supposedly some of its employees have supported Hamas during the October 7th attack on Israel.
I'm wondering how much that removal of funding has played into what we're seeing right now, this famine.
Hilal Elver: Well, UNRWA was a very important organization since 2007. UNRWA is a kind of bloodline of Gaza. Education, health, all kind of, uh, human systems is under UNRWA. Strangely enough, when the International Court of Justice made a decision.
It was a very shocking decision for the world. They didn't say you should make the, uh, ceasefire because ceasefire is not under their domain, but they said stop any kind of condition that goes to plausibility of the genocide. So this decision will be too long, three years, four years, but they just kind of Provisional decision to stop the humanitarian problems.
Now South Africa is going again to, uh, court asking what happened after the provisional decision. Israel didn't do anything. Can we repeat it again? It didn't go to the mainstream media, but there will be another hearing soon about it. But the long story short. After the decision of the International Court of Justice, suddenly, a problem came out.
The investigation started, whether or not that was the correct accusation. But, uh, many international community, many developed countries stopped helping them financially. Still, the investigation is going on, but some of the countries decided, I think we should start again because this is going to be very difficult situation.
UNRWA is a vital organization. You can't stop UNRWA. After the court decision, the war became even more problematic. They were attacking the humanitarian aid and work for program said that if you attack the humanitarian aid, we cannot really do it and they stopped the aid. So Israel was blaming that Hamas were attacking and there was also another blame that Israel was attacking.
So we saw some kind of videos in social media. People were killed, hundreds of people were killed. And Israel said that, oh, we didn't, we didn't kill them, but they were attacking us. Are you talking about the food delivery? Yeah, food delivery. Yeah, exactly. There are a bunch of accusation from both sides, but the clarity is Humanitarian aid was blocked one way or another.
Vinita Srivastava: And with the humanitarian food aid hopefully starting to perhaps come back with the funding of some, as you mentioned, some countries now agreeing to refund this very vital United Nations organization, what else do you think the international community needs to be doing at this time?
Hilal Elver: Well, of course, this is just the humanitarian aid part.
Israel says, no, we are sending the humanitarian aid. We are allowing bunch of trucks or something. So he said, she said kind of things. First of all, they should stop giving any kind of military aid to Israel or any war area. It doesn't matter Israel, same thing in Sudan, same thing in Yemen, no military aid, any kind of active war.
And Security Council even, they are not even able to make it a ceasefire resolution. But individual countries should do that. For instance, U. S. can say, okay, we don't give any more military aid to Israel. This is not going to happen. But maybe some other countries, maybe Sweden, or maybe Canada, or some other kind of economic sanctions.
Many of the countries, including the European Union, because the European Union is the biggest Trade partner of Israel, they can easily make a decision about not investing, not allowing trade to Israel in order to sort of give them a certain kind of limitation. If you really want to stop this human catastrophe, you have to stop helping them and you have to start isolating them.
Vinita Srivastava: As a UN Special Rapporteur, I'm sure you've seen a lot. I'm wondering if you can explain how this is different in Gaza from some of those other areas. Sudan, you mentioned, Yemen.
Hilal Elver: Now it's the Yemen and South Sudan is very active, and they are also under the conflict areas. South Sudan, also combination of the climate change. Afghanistan also same. They are having a serious kind of catastrophic drought, but they are also post conflict countries. That countries, they have combination of the conflict and other reasons. In Gaza, full problem of the conflict, first of all. There is no other impact that makes the famine more problematic.
Secondly, it goes completely entire population. And in the entire region, in Sudan and Yemen, part of the countries, the fight is happening and also kind of problematic part, blocking the humanitarian aid, not to the entire country, but only parts. So that's why in speed and then comprehensiveness are very different in Gaza and no one is excluded.
Vinita Srivastava: You've said that in Gaza, children grow up very fast, and you've called this a war against children. Can you tell us more about that?
Hilal Elver: Yes, the issue is very, very sad, actually, because Gaza is very high population young generation. Fifty percent of the population are under 18. You see always children, we see them in our TV.
Every day. It's not something hiding. And also even Israel does not really hide. We are living in the social media world. We can see everything. And you see children are right now in charge of getting water, in charge of going to humanitarian trucks and getting a little bit of food. That's why they're not anymore children.
And also malnutrition case is more than problematic of famine. Let's say we have 50 percent famine under serious, uh, danger. But other 50 percent is almost all of them are going to have a serious kind of health problem in the future. Not only health problem, but also brain damage. Because between zero to two years old.
Even the short period of time of malnutrition, which is three months, then you lose the kind of brain power, not only immune system problems. So we see the future generation of Gazas are in serious trouble. Even we stop the war right now, we're going to lose this generation. There's no, no way to. You correct or recover this generation.
So you know this amputation is incredible. I mean, never heard in any, any conflict that too many children amputated without even anesthetic. This is, this is very hard. The children are born and the second day they died because the mother didn't have enough milk to give the child. So in this yesterday's report, FAO become adamant about livestock.
And I was surprised why they're worried about livestock. The livestock is the food for the children, the milk. 70 percent of the livestock was killed right now. And also now they are trying to put the animal feed to Gaza. to get the milk for the children. Well, it's incredible. Now people are eating animal feed in Gaza.
So this is unheard situation and we are hearing them every day.
Vinita Srivastava: Experts have been sounding the alarm, as you said, for longer than just since December. You even go back to 2007, but even if we're just talking about the shorter history, what is the actual issue here with following international laws? We've had these international laws in place to prevent crimes against humanity, and yet here we are.
Hilal Elver: Well, we are talking about impunity. I mean, there are a bunch of criminal issues that was right now subject to be prosecuted. War crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides, crimes of starvation, all of them are a bunch of international law principles, international criminal court, and also international court of justice.
Vinita Srivastava: International court of justice is just the one you talked about, but I'm talking about international law. of 1977, the Rome Statute 1998, I mean, these things were put in place post Second World War, but there's been so many examples now of horrific crimes against humanity, and each time we try and pass a law to stop.
Hilal Elver: So, in normal and perfect world, we have international humanitarian law, we have international human rights law, And we have international criminal law. They all have their own specific mandate and specific jurisdiction. For instance, international human rights law are applicable in this kind of case, either peacetime or the wartime.
So you have to have a right to food, right to housing, right to water, right to health, right to education. No matter what, it's a wartime. Or peacetime. International humanitarian law is basically protecting civilians in times of war. International humanitarian law constantly was violated. International criminal law is when the violations occur, they are the court, they are the prosecution, they are bringing justice to that kind of serious humanitarian violation. But International Court of Justice is not a criminal court. It's a regular court. At the end of whatever the decision will be done, it will not be a criminal decision. They are investigation whether or not a crime of genocide occurred or not. This is not the only happen in Gaza.
Two, three years ago, there was a case, Gambia brought the case against Myanmar, exactly about the genocide, and court exactly made the decision provisionally. They said, yes, it would be plausible, Palestine Israel case is not new for the International Court of Justice. And same thing, court is trying to do their best, but at the end, who will be implementing it?
International system based on consensus. If there is no consensus, international law cannot be implemented. Or if there is no unity in the Security Council to block the war, which they are the most powerful among the international organizations or international system, but the power of the five big Countries, which is the winners of the World War, they can block.
For instance, the Ukraine case also blocked by Russia, and this Palestine case blocked by the United States. So there's always good friend in the Security Council to escape. So there's a strong impunity. In relation to starvation, even more severe impunity. Because starvation as a war machine, killing machine, has been used historically in many, many conflicts.
Palestine is not the only one, it will not be the only one. But unfortunately, it's no country for no armed forces was punished by any international court. including domestic court. So that's the kind of thing, either the causality is very difficult or because of the geopolitical reasons, the court can, instance, Doesn't go through, or prosecutor just throw away, or sometimes even there's a genocide, the starvation comes second.
They don't really care about starvation, they go to the genocide. And the starvation case is so long term impact of the future generation. This Gaza case, because it's too severe, too open, too in front of our eyes, will make a little bit of Difference in relation to, uh, getting rid of impunity. It's only hope.
Vinita Srivastava: That was my last question is that it is very hard. It's very, very difficult to see any way through this. As you said, even if you stop it right now, it's like the impacts are ongoing generationally for the future children, especially, but for everyone. What keeps you motivated here? What gives you that glimmer of hope?
Hilal Elver: Well, the glimmer of hope. Things are, uh, slightly changing. There is something going on, but it has to be faster. First of all, they have to stop fighting. Stop fighting, stop killing. If this would happen very soon, then will be recovery possibility. And also Israel will be recovered too, because there become kind of persona, the country non grata, which should not be that way.
Of course, internally, the Israeli citizens are important. If they support, ceasefire. Maybe Israeli government will change. There will be maybe revolution. The young generation will not be part of that kind of atrocities. So that's the hope for the young generation. Same thing for Palestinians. Young generation maybe will be much better ideologically and future wise democratically.
It will have a better place in Gaza. So. future is for the young generation. That's what I'm hoping.
Vinita Srivastava: Hilal Elver, thank you so much for your time and the work that you do. I really appreciate it.
Hilal Elver: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
OUTRO
Vinita Srivastava: Well, that's it for this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient. Thank you for listening.
Be sure to follow us so that you don't miss next week's episode. We'll be revisiting the issue of famine and forced starvation, this time from a historical perspective, as a tool of colonialism. In two very different locations, Canada and India. Our guests are two excellent and fascinating Canadian scholars.
In the meantime, reach out to us and tell us what you thought of this episode, or share ideas for stories or guests. We'd love to hear from you, our listeners. You can reach the team at dcmr@theconversation.com. Follow us on Apple and Instagram at dontcallmeresilientpodcast. Don't Call Me Resilient is a production of The Conversation Canada.
The series is produced and hosted by me, Vinita Srivastava. This episode is co-produced by associate producer Ateqah Khaki and our student journalist assistant producer Husein Haveliwala. Krish Dineshkumar does our sound design and mixing. Our consulting producer is Jennifer Moroz. Lisa Varano is the managing editor of The Conversation Canada, and Scott White is the CEO.
Zaki Ibrahim wrote and performed the music we use on the podcast, the track is Something in the Water.