The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food: The food crisis and starvation in Gaza

More than 1 million Palestinians face "catastrophic" levels of hunger, and one in three children below the age of two are "acutely malnourished" (IFSC report, March 2024). UN Secretary General António Guterres warns that “Palestinians in Gaza are enduring horrifying levels of hunger and suffering”. 

In this conversation,  UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Professor Michael Fakhri, discusses the man-made humanitarian disaster in Gaza, its root causes, implications, and the collective obligations of the international community towards Palestinians in Gaza. Professor Fakhri is joined in conversation by Dr Noam Peleg, Senior Lecturer and Director – Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the Faculty of Law and Justice and an Associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW Sydney.

Professor Michael Fakhri is a professor at the University of Oregon School of Law where he teaches courses on human rights, food law, development, and commercial law. He is also the director of the Food Resiliency Project in the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center. He was appointed Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food by the Human Rights Council in March 2020 and assumed his functions on 1 May 2020.