Bagnolet, 22 July 2025
When governments normalize genocide and institutions retreat behind silence, it is the duty of peoples’ movements to act.
As famine ravages Gaza under a suffocating siege and global inaction deepens, La Via Campesina, the international movement of over 200 million peasants, landless workers, and food producers, has launched a new phase of direct solidarity by joining the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s Handala ship.
This mission comes on the heels of La Via Campesina’s participation in the Sumoud Convoy in June 2025 a bold land initiative that sought to break the siege via Egypt’s Rafah crossing. Though obstructed, the convoy marked a turning point, a declaration that solidarity with Gaza can no longer be limited to statements, but must be embodied in courageous, coordinated civil interventions that confront the blockade where states refuse to act.
Among the crew is Hatem Laouini, a member of La Via Campesina’s regional coordination in ArNa (Arab Region and North Africa) and a leading activist from the Tunisian organization Million Rural Women and the Landless.
His presence aboard symbolizes the movement’s commitment to grassroots resistance and transnational solidarity, especially in the face of genocidal practices that defy basic principles of international humanitarian and human rights law.
A Siege Weaponizing Hunger: Gaza’s People Are Starving to Death
As of July 22, 2025, over 59,106 Palestinians have been killed and 142,511 injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Among them are at least 101 deaths directly attributed to hunger and malnutrition, including 80 children, a number expected to rise as famine tightens its grip. Entire neighborhoods have been flattened. Medical infrastructure has collapsed. More than 1.9 million people are internally displaced, and Gaza’s food system no longer exists.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) and UNRWA have repeatedly warned of “full-scale famine” unfolding in northern Gaza. Between March and June 2025, acute malnutrition among children under five more than doubled. Today, 1 in 10 children screened in UNRWA clinics across Gaza is suffering from acute malnutrition, many in conditions where no therapeutic treatment is available.
The starvation unfolding in Gaza is a calculated and systematic assault on civilian life. Entire communities are being denied access to food, clean water, and humanitarian aid as part of a broader strategy of collective punishment. This constitutes a direct violation of international humanitarian law, notably Article 54 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare. Furthermore, the intentional destruction of Gaza’s food systems, the obstruction of relief efforts, and the targeting of civilians seeking aid may amount to acts of genocide under Article II of the Genocide Convention.
Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has declared Israel’s actions in Gaza a ’campaign of starvation used as a weapon of war,’ citing deliberate obstruction of food, water, and humanitarian aid as a calculated strategy requiring urgent legal action.
From Statements to Action: The Handala as a Moral Intervention
The Handala mission stands as a concrete expression of grassroots determination in the face of institutional failure and global silence. Amidst a landscape where governments limit their responses to cautious statements, and international bodies delay action while atrocities escalate, this mission asserts a form of solidarity that is bold, tangible, and rooted in collective conscience.
This is a deliberate act of civil resistance grounded in international legal principles. It reflects the agency and responsibility of social movements and civil society actors to confront policies of siege and starvation, to uphold the right to life, and to intervene when states choose paralysis.
The voyage is part of a growing transnational momentum one that insists that where official diplomacy collapses, people’s movements must rise to defend justice.
La Via Campesina Demands Immediate Global Action
- Protection of all civilians and volunteers aboard the Handala, as required by international maritime and humanitarian law.
- The immediate and unconditional lifting of the siege on Gaza, which constitutes collective punishment and a form of structural genocide.
- Full, unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, free from political manipulation or conditionality.
- An end to all military, economic, and diplomatic relations with Israel, until it ceases its crimes and complies with international law.
- Activation of international legal mechanisms, including the International Criminal Court, to hold perpetrators accountable for the crime of starvation and other war crimes in Gaza.
Food is a Right, Not a Weapon
As a global movement of food producers, La Via Campesina asserts that food is a fundamental human right. The use of starvation to force submission is a grotesque affront to the dignity of life and a betrayal of humanity. In Gaza, where children now die while searching for crumbs of bread or clean water, the moral urgency of intervention surpasses diplomacy.
This is why La Via Campesina supports actions that break the siege not just symbolically, but physically, because starvation cannot be countered with statements. It must be met with courage, confrontation, and concrete acts of solidarity.
Let Gaza Live. Break the Siege. End the Starvation.
All Eyes on Gaza. All Voices for Justice.
La Via Campesina | 23 July 2025
This post is also available in Español.