Greg Bouwer
IINZ
When humanitarian crises are assessed, the world depends on independent and science-based measures to guide aid distribution and to keep politics out of life-and-death judgments. For famine, that measure has long been the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed mechanism that applies strict thresholds to determine when conditions cross into the catastrophic. These thresholds matter: they ensure that declarations of famine are objective, credible, and comparable across time and place.
But in the case of Gaza, those standards have quietly been rewritten.
In its July 29, 2025 assessment, the IPC lowered the threshold for acute malnutrition from 30 per cent to 15 per cent, effectively halving the bar for declaring famine. It also introduced a new measurement, the mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) method, which is quicker but less accurate than the long-established weight-for-height measure. These changes were buried in a footnote, excluded from the official famine fact sheet, and omitted from the technical manual.
The result? Using the new rules, Gaza City ‘qualified’ for famine-level malnutrition at 16.5 per cent – a figure that would never have met the global standard.
This is not science. This is politics.
A Politicised Process
For decades, the famine criteria have been among the most respected in humanitarian reporting precisely because they resisted politicisation. Governments and aid organisations could disagree on policy, but the data was the data. That credibility has now been eroded.
Why was the threshold lowered for Gaza but not for other conflict zones? Children in Yemen, Sudan, and Afghanistan are facing malnutrition at levels that exceed even the original 30 per cent bar, yet no corresponding ‘emergency adjustments’” were made there. By selectively changing the standard for Gaza – and doing so quietly – the IPC has made itself appear less a neutral arbiter of humanitarian conditions and more an actor in a political campaign.
The campaign is obvious: to bolster the narrative that Israel is deliberately starving Gaza, thereby laying the groundwork for further ‘war crimes’ accusations. It is no coincidence that the adjusted figures were timed to generate global headlines and to pressure governments into escalating condemnation of Israel.
The Consequences of Manipulation
This matters far beyond Israel. If famine definitions can be rewritten mid-crisis, buried in technical notes, and selectively applied, then the entire humanitarian system loses its integrity. Donors, policymakers, and the public will ask: if the rules shift depending on the politics of the conflict, why should we trust them at all?
The danger is that real hunger crises – where thresholds are breached under the original, scientifically established criteria – will be met with skepticism. When numbers are manipulated in Gaza, the consequence is not only political damage to Israel: it is a loss of trust in the global system designed to protect the world’s most vulnerable. The very people that UN agencies claim to defend are the ones who will suffer when their warnings are dismissed as politicised propaganda.
Implications for New Zealand
For New Zealand, this should ring alarm bells. Our government relies heavily on UN assessments when determining where aid should go and how to position itself in international forums. If those assessments are manipulated for political ends, New Zealand risks directing resources and forming policies based not on humanitarian need, but on a politicised narrative aimed at Israel.
The foreign minister and government agencies should insist on transparency from the UN. Any change in famine thresholds should be openly debated, scientifically justified, and applied universally. Otherwise, New Zealand risks complicity in a system that sacrifices truth for politics.
A Pattern of Double Standards
This episode fits a familiar pattern. Time and again, Israel is held to standards no other nation faces. Whether in the UN Human Rights Council’s obsessive focus, in the distorted casualty figures repeated without scrutiny, or in the manipulation of humanitarian criteria, the goal is the same: to isolate Israel and to undermine its legitimacy.
But the UN has crossed a new line. By altering the very definition of famine, it has not only targeted Israel but jeopardised the credibility of humanitarian reporting everywhere.
Conclusion
Humanitarian standards exist to protect truth, protect lives, and prevent politics from contaminating aid. In Gaza, the UN has abandoned that principle. By moving the goalposts, it has undermined trust in the very system designed to safeguard the vulnerable.
New Zealand should not remain silent. If international standards are to be changed, let them be changed openly, transparently, and consistently. Anything less is not humanitarianism – it is propaganda dressed in humanitarian clothing.
And when hunger is politicised, it is not only Israel that suffers. The world’s hungry, from Sudan to Yemen to Afghanistan, will pay the ultimate price when their crises are met with disbelief.
This article was originally published by the Israel Institute of New Zealand.
