The organization stated in a message on its social media platform X, on Sunday, February 18th, that these aids were distributed with the support of the CBPF institution.

Previously, the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency, had stated that they distributed specific malnutrition supplies to over 4 million women and children in Afghanistan.

This comes as the rates of malnutrition among women and children in Afghanistan have increased, becoming a serious concern.

Both the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have consistently warned about the high levels of malnutrition in Afghanistan.

According to OCHA’s report, approximately 15.5 million people are facing acute food insecurity, with 2.7 million of them in emergencies.

The committee emphasizes that in the coming year, climate change, economic pressures, increased impunity, and reduced international support will accelerate humanitarian crises worldwide.

This comes as human rights organizations have consistently emphasized the need to address poverty and hunger among women and children in Afghanistan.

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Since early October, Israeli attacks across Gaza have damaged local bakeries and food warehouses, along with roads that are used to transport humanitarian aid. Israel’s total blockade on the enclave has also restricted food, water and fuel from entering in the first place.

More than 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report on Monday.

The IPC, which measures hunger risks, also reported on Thursday that 2.08 million people in Gaza are facing “acute food insecurity” that can be classified in the organisation’s phase three of risk or above.

The IPC has five phases of acute food insecurity, ranging from none (phase one) to catastrophe or famine (phase five). Phase three and five are considered crisis and emergency. “Acute” food insecurity is a short-term phenomenon and tends to stem from unusual or man-made shocks, compared with “chronic” food insecurity, which is long-term and a result of insufficient means of living.

Between December and February, Gaza’s entire population is projected to fall under phase three or above, according to the United Nations-backed report.

If current hostilities and limited aid continue, Gaza is also at risk of experiencing a famine by early February. The IPC definition of famine is when at least 20 per cent of the population in an area falls under phase five of acute food insecurity.

What does food access look like in Gaza?

Families in Gaza have had to cope with deteriorating quality and declining quantities of food, along with an inability to cook meals due to fuel shortages.

Spending a day without eating any food has become usual. In early December, the World Food Programme (WFP) reported that nine out of 10 people across the enclave skipped meals for long periods.

Nutritionally vulnerable groups such as pregnant women are at heightened risk, while baby formula and milk have been in severely short supply for toddlers who rely on it.

Even preparing meals requires finding alternatives to cooking gas, and aside from using firewood or cardboard, at least 13 per cent of displaced people have been forced to burn solid waste, says the WFP.

Hunger has also quickly escalated since a brief truce ended in early December. Just 12 days after it ended, the WFP found that at least half of the internally displaced people surveyed knew someone who had resorted to consuming raw meat.

Access to water is also scarce, with less than two litres (0.5 gallons) available for each person per day – far short of the 15 litres needed to survive, according to the WFP.

What level of food aid is entering Gaza?

Since October 7, the number of trucks carrying food that entered Gaza in a month fell by more than half, compared with at least 10,000 trucks before the war.

Over two months of war, only 1,249 trucks carrying food assistance reached Gaza, the WFP reported on December 6. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also reported that over the first 70 days of the war, only 10 per cent of the food needed for Gaza’s entire population entered the enclave.

The WFP has recommended that at least 100 trucks carrying just food and water enter Gaza a day, but on most days since the war, even the total amount of trucks entering has been less than that. The agency also noted that damaged roads near Rafah at the border with Egypt – where must aid is now dispersed from – cannot accommodate this increase.

At the height of aid supply during the truce lasting from November 24 to December 1, some 200 trucks entered daily, while the WFP was only able to reach about 10 per cent of Gaza’s population with in-kind and cash-based food assistance.

Even once food aid is supplied, access to a sufficient share has not been possible. A report from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and Al Mezan, a human rights organisation based in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, on December 14 found that people near Rafah’s food distribution centres would often have to wait in line for 10 hours, and sometimes still returned home empty-handed.

“I have to walk three kilometres to get one gallon [of water],” Marwan, a 30-year-old Palestinian, who fled south with his pregnant wife and two children on November 9, told Human Rights Watch. “And there is no food. If we can find food, it is canned food. Not all of us are eating well.”

Still, Gaza’s population primarily relies on humanitarian assistance for food, followed by local markets and assistance from friends or relatives. With rising shortages across all of these, support from relatives is also dwindling, according to the WFP.

As more of Gaza’s population is pushed into shelters in southern governorates, which are also under intense bombardment, competition for food is expected to increase, said the IPC.

Can people in Gaza access food locally?

Fighting across the Gaza Strip, and especially in the northern governorates, has particularly made it difficult to access food and aid.

Local farmlands, flour mills, bakeries and warehouses have also been directly damaged by Israeli bombardments.

Only a month after fighting broke out, all of northern Gaza’s bakeries closed due to lack of supplies such as flour and fuel, the UN reported on November 8. Risks of being hit by Israeli strikes also resulted in movement restrictions for those seeking to leave their homes for food.

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“We are talking about a carpet bombardment of entire neighbourhoods and residential blocks,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza, said on Thursday, following heavy overnight shelling there.

The Israeli army “ordered with a threatening tone to move to Rafah because it is safe”, he said, but residential homes “were destroyed”.

“[These strikes] are not concentrated in one area of Rafah … multiple locations were targeted, just sending waves of fear and concern that confirm what people have talked about and expressed before – there is literally no safe place in the Gaza Strip, including the areas Israel designated as safe.”

After more than two months of war, starting on October 7, Mahmoud said that “the mood of these more than 60 days has been death, destruction and displacement”.

“We’re talking about more than 60 days of constant movement and running for their lives from one place to another, from the extreme northern part of the Gazan city of Beit Hanoon to the extreme south by Rafah, where many people are being packed and squeezed.”

‘Alarming levels of hunger’

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said that households in northern Gaza are “experiencing alarming levels of hunger”.

At least 97 per cent of households in northern Gaza have “inadequate food consumption”, with nine out of 10 people going one full day and night without food.

In the southern governorates, a third of the households have reported high levels of severe or very severe hunger, with 53 per cent experiencing moderate hunger.

“Palestinians lack everything they need to survive,” Mahmoud said.

While pursuing its offensive in the south, Israeli armed forces have attacked several refugee camps, among them the Jabalia camp in the north and the al-Maghazi camp in the centre. The attack in Jabalia killed 22 relatives of Al Jazeera journalist Momin Alshrafi, including his father, mother, three siblings, and children.

According to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, 60 per cent of the wounded require urgent medical treatment abroad, pointing to the collapse of the health sector in Gaza.

“The occupation forces are deliberately arresting and abusing the sick and wounded, including paramedics from our crews, and we are on the cusp of a health and environmental catastrophe in the Strip,” a statement said.

When will it end?

As the death toll mounts amid the humanitarian catastrophe, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told officials in Israel’s war cabinet last week that the administration of US President Joe Biden believed the war should end in weeks – not months, according to The Wall Street Journal,

Israeli officials, in turn, expressed an interest in a return to normalcy, especially in the interest of economic stability, but did not make any guarantees, the report said.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel could indefinitely occupy part of the Gaza Strip to create a “buffer zone”, a move that would put him on a collision course with regional allies and the United States.

Conflicting reports have also emerged on whether Israeli troops have surrounded the house of Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, in Khan Younis.

Late on Wednesday, Netanyahu said it was “just a matter of time until we get him” and that Israeli soldiers had encircled his house.

Yet, military spokesperson Daniel Hagari later said Sinwar’s home is the entire “Khan Younis area”, giving no indication that a specific location had been surrounded.

Three names top Israel’s most-wanted men, namely Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades; his second-in-command, Marwan Issa; and Sinwar.

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According to a recent UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report, the country’s most remote areas would be especially at risk from the significant financing gaps endangering crucial humanitarian aid. Women and children are the most vulnerable amid the Taliban’s mounting restrictions.

“Additionally, 1.4 million new and expecting mothers, toddlers, and preschoolers are no longer receiving foods designed to prevent malnutrition,” the report stressed.

Moreover, the report stated that “From July onwards, only 5 million people will receive emergency food assistance when 15 million people in Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) 3 and 4 do not know where their next meal will come from.”

Meanwhile, “nutrition partners also reported that 25 mobile health and nutrition teams (MHNTs) in four provinces have been shut down due to funding shortfalls. The affected provinces include Nuristan, Kunar, Laghman and Nangarhar.”

Closing these teams means more than 100,000 people will not have access to essential health and nutrition care services across the Eastern region.

More than 31,500 households with severely undernourished children would also be denied access to vital integrated cash packages for nutrition due to a lack of financing.

Additionally, the Taliban’s string of restrictive bans on education could result in the closure of 2,800 community-based classrooms, affecting 83,000 kids, 59% of whom are girls, and preventing them from continuing their education beyond the sixth grade.

Additionally, about 2.6 million individuals need access to clean drinking water, 1.5 million miss out on hygiene education, 1.6 million lack necessary nonfood items, and 844,000 are exposed to poor sanitation.

Just 9% of the $4.6 billion needed for Afghanistan’s initial Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP) had been received as of June of this year.

However, if funding shortfalls are not filled, WFP has warned that the organization’s budget for food assistance will end by the end of October.

The World Food Programme estimates that at least $1.2 billion is needed to prevent the alarming malnutrition and hunger rates from rising in the coming months.

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