How the UN’s Famine Authority Engaged in Data Fraud to Undermine U.S. Humanitarian Aid

On August 22, the United Nations declared that famine was “currently occurring” in Gaza City. Within hours the claim drove headlines, advocacy, and legal filings.

All of it based on flawed science. A forensic review of the data by our team at the Network Contagion Research Institute found that the declaration leaned on flimsy modeling, and buried evidence. That matters because the declaration undercuts a U.S.-backed aid model that is actually delivering.

With confidence in international institutions eroding, the United States launched a new experiment in humanitarian aid. Working through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) with State Department support, this model represents the first serious alternative to the UN’s decades-old aid machinery. Early evidence suggested it was working: food reached people more reliably, nutrition outcomes improved, and distribution was more predictable.

That all changed when the UN’s famine authority, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), declared a famine in Gaza City. The announcement instantly shaped headlines, influencers, and legal forums. But behind the language of science was something else entirely: manipulated modeling, buried evidence, and a systematic effort to discredit the new, U.S.-led approach that was actually working.

This was not a mistake. It was a set of choices. And every choice cut in the same direction: toward alarmism, toward distortion, and away from the success of American leadership.

A Case Study in Statistical Malpractice

The UN famine authority’s declaration rests most centrally on a claim that child malnutrition in Gaza was “increasing exponentially.”

This was not a side note. It was the foundation of the UN famine authority’s entire argument that famine was not only happening, but already locked into a death spiral. The projections of catastrophe — and the justification for the world’s response – hinged on that exponential model. But the model was a scatterplot of just six data points, with a trend line fit by an excel spreadsheet regression function. Any introductory statistics class warns against fitting exponentials to tiny samples. The first point sat out of line with the second in a way that can create the illusion of acceleration.

There is more. The UN-backed analysts did not tell readers that a plain linear model explained the same six points just as well. They did not share the fit statistics that would let others judge. They did not present alternative trend-lines. And they did not acknowledge that a larger, updated dataset of more than 15,000 children, available two weeks before publication, broke the exponential story entirely.

READ THE FULL REPORT: Starving for the Truth: Fraud, Famine and the Collapse of Rigor in IPC’s Gaza Declaration

Not only this, but the fresh data disproved the UN famine authority’s central allegation. Their famine declaration rested on the claim that child malnutrition had surged beyond the 15 percent threshold required to trigger a famine classification. Yet the updated data set the rate at 13.5 percent. By the UN famine authority’s own standard, famine had not been reached. To repeat: the UN’s adopted famine threshold was not met, and their own data source proved it.

Let’s be clear. At each step, the United Nations’ famine authority made a decision:

• They chose to fit an exponential model to six data points, a textbook statistical error.
• They chose to hide the fact that a less incriminating, linear model fit the data just as well.
• They chose to ignore updated data from a far larger sample that contradicted explosive growth of famine.
• They chose to declare famine even though their own updated data showed child malnutrition at 13.5 percent, below the 15 percent threshold required by their own standard.

These are not neutral omissions. These are consistent, directional decisions. And that direction points squarely at undermining evidence of improvement, especially improvement linked to U.S.-backed aid.

Buried Evidence and a Double Standard

Statistical modeling was not the only method manipulated. In July, the UN’s famine authority commissioned two hunger surveys in Gaza. One found that 73 percent of households suffered “severe” or “very severe” hunger. The other, conducted at the same time, found that number to be just 21 percent. Both were described as representative. Only the more extreme figure appeared in the final report. The other was buried in a back annex.

Even where the numbers were similar between governates, the classifications shifted without explanation. Gaza Governorate and Deir al-Balah returned nearly identical scores. One was labeled famine. The other was two full phases lower.

And then there is Rafah, the epicenter of Gaza Humanitarian Fund distribution. It is also the region with the most stable nutrition outcomes. The UN famine authority excluded it entirely from its analysis, claiming it had been “depopulated.” Yet in prior reports, Rafah was included without issue. Was this about unavailable data or was it about removing inconvenient results?

Attacking What Works

According to the UN famine authority’s own report, recipients of GHF aid were better nourished. They averaged 1,700 kilocalories per day, hundreds more than those relying on other sources. Meanwhile, violence around GHF distribution sites fell by more than 25 percent between June and August.

But rather than highlight those results, the UNs’ famine authority dismissed GHF’s efforts outright. They said the aid did not meet their internal definition of “humanitarian assistance.”

Reverend Johnnie Moore, the head of the GHF, said the results of his group’s effort can’t be dismissed.

“Where GHF distributions operate, nutrition outcomes improve and violence now decreases,” Moore says. “Any responsible body should recognize and reinforce these results, not dismiss them. If the international community truly wants to help, it must build on what works rather than undermine it.”

The UN’s famine authority did not just dismiss these gains. They erased them. They redrew the map, suppressed the results, and changed the rules, which all happen to preserve a narrative that painted American-led aid as irrelevant or worse.

A Sabotage of American Legitimacy

In Gaza, U.S. leadership has taken the form of a new, evidence-based model of humanitarian aid and, in this context, these systemic, unsubstantiated accusations take on the appearance of a coordinated attempt to delegitimize a rival approach.

The UN famine authority based its mortality estimates on Hamas-controlled data. It failed to disclose forecasting errors. It buried evidence of U.S. progress. It downgraded one region and inflated another, despite similar conditions.

Even within the UN famine authority’s  global record, Gaza stands out. In NCRI’s independent audit of their forecast accuracy across eight countries, Gaza was the worst overprojection NCRI could detect in the records on their website. 80 percent of subregions were misclassified at a higher level than what actually occurred. That fact was never disclosed publicly. It had to be reconstructed from raw data.

The Truth Is the First Casualty

Every decision made by the UN famine authority in this process, every model they selected, every figure they buried, every area they excluded, had the effect of obscuring evidence that U.S.-backed aid programs were showing positive results.

This was not a transparent application of data science. The choices made functioned less as neutral analysis and more as narrative shaping.

The UN famine authority’s report seemingly attempted to obscure evidence that U.S.-backed aid programs were delivering food more effectively, contributing to improved nutrition outcomes, reduced violence, and greater predictability in distribution.

If a small data science organization based in New Jersey can identify systemic irregularities at the core of the UN famine authority’s assessments, there is strong reason to call for a deeper, independent investigation. Congress, the State Department, and external watchdogs should review how the UN and its affiliates produced findings that diverged from their own data and thresholds, and why contradictory evidence was excluded or downplayed.

The implications go beyond Gaza. If a UN agency can misclassify famine through methodological or reporting failures, confidence in global humanitarian assessments is at risk. An investigation is essential to safeguard the integrity of humanitarian science and restore trust in international reporting.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) is a nonpartisan research institute leading the field of cybersocial science a discipline that studies how technology, psychology, and society interact in the age of algorithmic influence.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.