The head of Save the Children delivered a harrowing account on Wednesday of the suffering endured by children in Gaza, describing how malnutrition has left them so weak they cannot even cry. Addressing the UN Security Council, Inger Ashing, president of the international charity, said famine, officially declared by the UN last week, is far more than a technical term.

“When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully. This, in simple terms, is what famine is,” Ashing told diplomats. She painted a grim picture of how starvation slowly destroys the body: first consuming fat stores, and then muscle and vital organs.

“Yet our clinics are almost silent. Now, children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away,” Ashing said.

Aid groups have long warned that famine was looming, citing ‘Israel’s’ restrictions on food and essential supplies entering Gaza since October 2023.

“Everyone in this room has a legal and moral responsibility to act to stop this atrocity,” Ashing added. The UN formally declared famine in Gaza on Friday, pointing to what it called systematic obstruction of aid by ‘Israel’ over the course of the 22-month assault.

According to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC), 500,000 people in the Gaza governorate, including Gaza City, are currently facing famine conditions, roughly one-fifth of the territory’s population. The IPC warned that famine could affect up to two-thirds of Gaza by the end of September.

Israel called the report “fabricated” on Wednesday and demanded the IPC retract it.

Following the Security Council meeting, 14 of 15 members, all except the United States, issued a joint statement expressing “profound alarm and distress” over the famine declaration, affirming their trust in the IPC’s findings.