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LAST UPDATE | 10 Jun
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.Â
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.Â
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 is intentionally cut.
Mothers in Gaza, starving and malnourished, struggle to breastfeed, and any available formula cannot be safely prepared. Babies are dying of hunger, not due to natural disaster, but as the direct outcome of calculated policies enacted by Israel and tacitly permitted by governments around the world.
Figures from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) (a consortium of UN agencies, governments and humanitarian organisations) show that over 500,000 people in Gaza are facing ‘catastrophic hunger’.
More than 71,000 children under five are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in the coming months, and 14,000 of them will be severe cases. One in three children under two in the north is already wasting. 17,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are in urgent need of treatment just to survive.
I watched a video of a baby in Gaza: alone and unnamed, until health workers found ‘Rakan’ written on his hand. His mother, knowing she might not survive, gave him that dignity – that his name would not die with her. I now know his name, and so should you.
Starving civilians is a war crime. Blocking food, formula and water from babies violates the Geneva Conventions and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and these basic protections are being shredded in Gaza.
But there is another layer that remains almost entirely unaddressed within the human rights context. In humanitarian crises, infant and young child feeding is governed by clear, evidence-based protocols. The Operational Guidance on Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies (IYCF-E), endorsed by WHO, UNICEF and national governments, outlines the necessary actions: supporting breastfeeding, providing safe alternatives when needed, and preventing commercial exploitation. Gaza’s mothers and babies are entitled to this protection. They are not receiving it.
These systems should have protected Rakan’s mother. She should have had access to clean water, proper nutrition, breastfeeding support and safe formula feeding options. IYCF-E exists to uphold the right of every mother and child to survive when catastrophe hits and until normality resumes.
Instead, she wrote his name on his little hand — because everything else, including, ultimately, her life, was stolen from her.
This framework is a legal and ethical obligation grounded in international standards, and right now, it is being ignored. In Palestine, it is yet another duty the international community is allowing to be breached, as the rights and lives of mothers and babies are erased in plain sight.
In the world of IYCF-E, we talk a lot about planning. We focus on supporting breastfeeding in difficult conditions. We look at safe formula storage and distribution.
We work to protect infants in times of chaos. Until now, we’ve operated on the assumption that emergencies are unpredictable. That the harm to babies is at best unintentional and at worst a form of so-called collateral damage.
But what happens when it’s not?
As someone who researches in the field of IYCF-E, I’m asking questions I never thought I’d have to ask. How do we plan for a situation where the starvation of babies isn’t the consequence of war, but the strategy?
Gaza has forced us to confront a new level of cruelty. And that means our field, our governments, and our institutions must stop treating infant feeding as the responsibility of the mother. It is the frontline. And right now, in Gaza, we are losing it.
When I think about what it means to plan for a crisis like this, I think of Rakan. His mother did everything she could. She fed him, loved him and protected him, and when there was nothing left, she wrote his name on his hand so that if he survives, he has, at least, got that.
That was her emergency plan. In 2025, the international community’s complicity in the massacre of Gaza left her with nothing else.
Every baby has the right to food. Every mother has the right to feed her child safely. These are not abstract ideals. They are codified in international law, humanitarian guidance and common human decency.
But those rights mean nothing if no one acts to uphold them.
Ireland can, and must, take immediate, concrete steps. First, issue a formal declaration explicitly condemning the deliberate use of starvation against civilians as a war crime under international humanitarian law. Ireland must also publicly and formally call upon Israel and influential international actors, through the EU and the UN, to implement an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, specifically ensuring unimpeded access for humanitarian agencies, including specialist IYCF-E teams and supplies.
In addition, Ireland should more robustly support targeted international investigations at the ICC and UN, explicitly focused on the deliberate starvation of breastfeeding mothers, pregnant women and young children, providing dedicated funding and expert resources for documentation and accountability.
Furthermore, Ireland must specifically ring-fence funding within its planned €250 million annual global nutrition commitment for IYCF-E preparedness planning. This training should include breastfeeding counselling, safe infant formula distribution that is free from commercial influences, access to clean water and specialised training for humanitarian responders. This training must include developing new protocols for responding to situations where infant starvation is used as a weapon of war: a previously unimaginable cruelty that Gaza has forced us to confront.
Ireland has long championed human rights and humanitarian law on the global stage. There can be no further delay in showing leadership. Aid agencies know what to do.
Experts have published the guidance.
What is missing is political courage.
If you are a policymaker, raise your voice. If you are a health professional, advocate. If you are a parent in Ireland, do not be silent.
Because Rakan’s mother should not have had to do this alone. Because babies are not starving in secret.
They are starving in full view of the world.
Dr Clare Patton is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Leeds, specialising in maternal and child health through a business and human rights framework. She actively advises on policy regarding infant and young child feeding.
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