A Looming Famine: Starvation in Gaza

Webinar Recording

Date and Time: Tuesday, April 30, 2024 | 11:00am – 12:30pm EDT | 6:00pm – 7:30pm EEST

Location: Zoom – Registration required

Join the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights for a conversation about the starvation of civilians in the Gaza Strip. According to the Human Rights Watch, Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, and using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in Gaza which is a war crime according to international law. Our speakers will be Alex de Waal, an expert on mass starvation and the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation, Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, and Georgios Petropoulos, the head of the Gaza United Nations sub-office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territories. The webinar will be moderated by FXB’s Director of Research, Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, JD, MSc.

This webinar is co-sponsored by the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at the Harvard Divinity School, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Moderator:

Jacqueline Bhabha, JD, MSc

Jacqueline Bhabha is a Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health, the Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also the Director of Research at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.

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Speakers:

Alex de Waal, DPhil

Alex de Waal is the Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peace-building. His latest book is Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine (Polity Press 2017).

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Michael Fakhri, PhD, LLM

Michael Fakhri is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and 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 holds a Doctorate from the University of Toronto, Masters from Harvard Law School, Bachelor of Laws from Queen’s University, and a Bachelor of Science in Ecology from Western University.

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Georgios Petropoulos, MA

Georgios Petropoulos is the head of the Gaza sub-office of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories. UN OCHA coordinates humanitarian action in Gaza to expand its reach, improve prioritization, and reduce duplication. They have been tracking closely tracking the situation on the ground and reporting on it here.

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Speakers’ remarks are based on their own scholarship and experience. As such, they speak for themselves, not for Harvard University.