LAST UPDATE | 10 hrs ago

AS A MOTHER and academic researching Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies (IYCF-E), I never imagined planning, preparing and responding to crimes against humanity. 

I am a mother before I am anything else, and I cannot stop thinking about the mothers in Gaza: exhausted, malnourished and often alone, trying to keep their babies alive.

Newborns with sunken eyes and swollen bellies, too weak to cry. The most anguishing aspect is that this is not a natural disaster: it is the deliberate starvation of infants. It means every minute without action is a political decision to let them die slowly.

The Israeli government’s blockade in recent weeks has been as cruel as it has relentless. Its attempt at ‘providing aid’ on its own terms, via its own Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has only resulted in further cruel punishment for Palestinians and the killing of desperate, starving civilians. 

A child lies malnourished and unable to absorb food in a hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza in April. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

As a legal academic specialising in infant and young child feeding laws, and a recent co-editor of Ireland’s national IYCF-E planning guidance, I know what governments are required to do.

And I know they are failing.

Food is deliberately blocked in Gaza, water is weaponised, and electricity........

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