It is a famine on all of our watch. Everyone owns this. The Gaza Famine is the world’s famine. It is a famine that asks ‘but what did you do?’ A famine that will and must haunt us all.

It is a predictable and a preventable famine. A famine caused by cruelty, justified by revenge, enabled by indifference and sustained by complicity.

It is a famine that must spur the world to more urgent action. That must shame the world to do better. It is a famine that therefore also asks ‘… and what now will you do?’

My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him:

Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them. Let us get food and other supplies in, unimpeded and at the massive scale required. End the retribution. It is too late for far too many. But not for everyone in Gaza. Enough. For humanity’s sake, let us in.

Q: Is this a moment of shame for the world? And do you think that Gazans are living under collective punishment of starvation?

Under-Secretary-General Tom Fletcher: Thank you. And you're right. This is a moment of collective shame. And I think, we all feel that in different ways. We all have to look back as the international community and think, where could we have got this in a different place? And we've watched it happen in real time. We've not watched it as closely as we could have done, if you'd all been allowed in to cover it, as with the other big moments of famine that many of us can remember through our lifetimes. And it is, as I say, a famine that could have been prevented, but there has been that systematic obstruction preventing us from getting those trucks moving at the scale that they need to, preventing us from breaking that blockade that has existed for so much of recent months. Now, I don't know what people in Gaza will be saying this morning. I doubt they'll be reading this report. They don't need to read the report. They know this, and they've known it for weeks and months.

Q: Israel consistently denies that there is famine, not just the Israeli government, but, you know, people in the street will deny it, what would you say to them, maybe to ordinary Israelis?

TF: I think it's important. And many of those that I've been in touch with in recent weeks inside Israel, including survivors of the October 7th massacre in Nir Oz kibbutz and elsewhere, they want this food to get it. And I think it's important to recognize that there is a growing constituency in Israel that shares our demand, that we must get this food moving in, and we must avoid this starvation, that we must end this famine. I hope that their voices are heard. I would say to them, as I say to all of you, please read this report. Don't just listen to me. Read the report, cover to cover. Read it again and be moved to action.

Q: There was a meeting between the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian (OCHA) and the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF) on your collaboration. Please elaborate what this collaboration could be.

TF: So, I think you're referring that there was a meeting on August 6th, a briefing meeting held by the American Embassy, which included a representative of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is running these militarized hubs inside Gaza. We know how to distribute aid at the scale needed to end this famine. Our system of distribution has been systematically dismantled and replaced. We have the food to deliver a scale. We have the networks to deliver at scale. We know how to do this, and we need to be allowed to do our work. What others do is for them, we need to be allowed to work.

Q: Israeli policy is underpinned by the United States and by its continuing support for the GHF. Have you seen or had any contact with the Administration that showed any sign of shifting their positions?

TF: We are in very regular contact with American colleagues. It's notable that President Trump has clearly given an instruction that we must end this starvation. And I take that seriously, and I

know that American colleagues take that seriously too. My ask to them is, of course, to let us operate at scale, to use the networks, the resources that we have, the experience that we have. We do this all over the world, and we've done it in Gaza, of course. When I was there earlier this year, in the first quarter, during the ceasefire, we were getting in 600-700 trucks every day. We can do that again. We're ready to go, and we're trying to help our American colleagues understand that it is essential to ending this starvation and finding ways to use their influence and their engagement to that effect.

Q: Could you comment on how the NGO restrictions that Israel is imposing or is threatening to impose, is impacting the partners that you work with on the ground, the security implications.

TF: Thank you for raising this, because this isn't just about UN access. We also need commercial access to end this famine, commercial access at scale, and we need access for our essential humanitarian partners across the humanitarian movement. I think the best reference point, actually, is the letter that over 100 NGOs wrote last week, which sets out the way in which they are being impeded, very specifically, the obstacles that they need removed in order to deliver and so when we call for unimpeded access through all the crossings, we are calling for that for our entire humanitarian movement. We need them back on the ground, delivering at scale and in a principled humanitarian way.