Gaza Starves to Death:  Why OIC Fails Again and Again? 

The 2025 Gaza humanitarian tragedy has descended into horrific new depths. The death total has now risen over 61,000 Palestinians dead since the escalation began in October 2023, including 18,400 children killed and almost 10,000 women (UN Humanitarian Reports, 2025). In recent days, malnutrition and hunger have claimed at least 193 lives, 94 children among them, while total injuries exceed 150,000, many the result of explosive attacks with large casualty numbers (Gaza Health Ministry, 2025).

Nearly half a million of Gaza’s 2.1 million residents suffer from acute malnutrition and starvation, aggravated by Israel’s complete blockade restricting essential humanitarian aid such as food, medicines, and medical supplies. This blockade has led to a collapse in health services, severe vaccine shortages, and a breakdown in sanitation and clean water access, fueling a deadly cycle of disease and malnutrition (World Health Organization, 2025).

The aid distribution system itself has become militarized and perilous. The previous 400 aid points operating during a temporary ceasefire have been replaced by just four military-controlled sites, overcrowded and routinely exposed to gunfire, endangering two million residents trying to access food (Human Rights Watch, 2025).

A particularly distressing firsthand account comes from Anthony Aguilar, a retired U.S. Army Green Beret and former security contractor for UG Solutions, a subcontractor of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Aguilar revealed that Israeli forces militarized aid sites and issued deadly orders against civilians. He witnessed the killing of Amir, a starving young boy shot immediately after receiving food, and described the aid sites as “designed death traps” where machine guns and mortars were used for crowd control causing mass casualties. He testified Israeli officers ordered children removed from safe spots under threat of gunfire and that snipers were directed to shoot starving children who did not disperse. Aguilar resisted orders to shoot children, exposing the dehumanizing and lethal nature of the system (Aguilar, 2025, personal interview).

Amid the global condemnation and diplomatic maneuvering, one institution continues to raise significant questions about its relevance and credibility: the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Founded in 1969 to represent and protect the interests of the Muslim world, the OIC has once again found itself struggling to move beyond symbolic rhetoric and mobilize meaningful action. Why has the OIC failed to play a more decisive role in the Gaza crisis? And what does this failure reveal about the deeper fissures and limitations within the Muslim world?

The answer begins with the internal political and ideological divisions that have come to define the OIC. Comprising 57 member states with vastly different political systems, regional allegiances, economic capabilities, and strategic interests, the OIC is more of a fragmented mosaic than a unified bloc. These internal divisions are not just administrative but deeply ideological. For instance, the schism between Sunni-majority and Shia-majority nations continues to be a source of strategic mistrust and rivalry. The geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran casts a long shadow over OIC affairs, with many member states aligning based on sectarian or strategic loyalties rather than shared humanitarian concerns.

Is it possible for an institution split along such primordial fault lines to be an effective unifying agent for justice? The Gaza crisis highlights how national interests take precedence over collective responsibility. While certain states, such as Turkey and Malaysia, put forth firm public condemnations of the actions of Israel, others resorted to silence or weakly worded diplomatic cues, lest they compromise ties with Western nations or area allies. The outcome is an incoherent voice that cannot convey an aggregate, believable message to the international community.

This fragmentation is exacerbated further by the lack of effective coordination mechanisms within the OIC. Even with its secretariat and numerous subsidiary institutions, the organization lacks both the functional structure and financial heft to deliver effective intervention. The lack of an assigned humanitarian task force or common emergency response mechanism relegates the OIC to relying upon ad hoc action by individual OIC members or symbolic resolution bearing little practical import. In what ways could more effective coordination among OIC members be facilitated? Until it has an organized, well-resourced apparatus, the OIC cannot aspire to convert rhetorical solidarity into action.

Coordination failures are particularly conspicuous where viewed in the framework of humanitarian assistance. In the current Gaza crisis, logistical challenges, non-coordinated diplomatic pressure, and fragmented assistance efforts resulted in duplication in parts and severe neglect in others. It‍‍`s not just an issue of administration; it’s literally a question of life and death. In the presence of an emergency requiring expedient, coordinated action, OIC‍‍`s slowfooted, reactive strategy has cost it valuable time and credibility. And, beyond that, politicization of humanitarian relief in the Muslim world, where assistance has been employed as an instrument of soft power by non-state actors, erodes the needed collective response for crises like Gaza.

Even if internal cohesion and coordination improved, the OIC continues to confront an even greater challenge: the crushing power dynamics of the global system. In what ways could a body with minimal geopolitical clout shape a conflict run by players like the United States, European Union, and key military-industrial establishments either in agreement with the crisis or unresponsive to it? The international community‍‍`s acquiescence—taken in the form of arms sales, political support for Israel in arenas like the UN Security Council, and unwillingness to enforce international law—makes it impossible for the OIC‍‍`s moral voice to get heard.

Against this geopolitical backdrop, the OIC has to redefine its politics and alliances. Will it have to accommodate broader coalitions beyond the Muslim world? The OIC has never been willing to engage greatly with non-Muslim actors under fear of watering down its religious mission or political autonomy. In the increasingly multipolar world, an alliance with human rights-oriented governments and civil society groups regardless of religious or political identity could be significant. The Palestinian cause has had its constituencies among Western human rights groups, faith bodies, and even opposition groups in Israeli society. The OIC has to strategically align with these players with the intention of internationalizing the Palestinian campaign beyond the Muslim world and breaking the monopoly over geopolitical reach.

Experiences among other global organizations provide an insight into what might be. The European Union, despite internal division, has often coordinated shared foreign policy positions, such as sanctions, along with diplomatic action. ASEAN, despite constituting massively divergent states, has been successful in crafting an outline of regional conflict resolution, along with economic cooperation. Why has the OIC failed to institute corresponding binding procedures, or policy coherence? The answer perhaps does not fall in its structural limitations, but in an overall lack of desire to place national agendas after the greater good.

Bangladesh, with its interim Chief Adviser Professor Mohammad Younus at the helm, offers an emerging paradigm of political courage and visionary leadership in the Muslim world. Well known for his sense of integrity and visionary approach both to domestic reform and international justice, Younus has urged an interdependent foreign policy where moral responsibility goes hand-in-hand with diplomatic assertiveness. Bangladesh has been vocal about its strong support base among the Palestinian people in international arenas, including the UN, and could provide the middle course in reviving the OIC‍‍`s mission for human rights. Could leadership among medium-sized, neutral Muslim-majority nations like Bangladesh help catalyze reform within the OIC? The moral authority as well as grassroots legitimacy such nations possess might be better placed to get past the current deadlock than the accustomed leadership among larger but corrupt members.

The immediacy of the Gaza crisis—and potential future crises—requires an OIC reimagined. An organization that aims to speak for 1.9 billion Muslims globally cannot afford to be an echo chamber of diplomatic platitudes. A better, justice-oriented OIC would look like this. It must, first, face down and close its internal sectarian divides with sustained inter-government dialogue and conflict resolution frameworks. It must, second, create permanent, professional humanitarian and diplomatic structures, including emergency task teams and common coalitions for relief. It must, third, expand its partnerships worldwide, framing its interventions not as sectarian or religiously exclusive, but as broadly moral and humanistic.

The OIC must also adopt a more forceful legal strategy. Leveraging international courts, pursuing war crimes investigations, and supporting transnational legal advocacy can exert pressure where diplomacy fails. Member states must back such strategies with resources and political will. Additionally, the OIC should create a unified media strategy to counter disinformation, shape public opinion, and elevate Palestinian voices in the global narrative.

It could be said that it is unrealistic to expect such a shift from the OIC, with its past indecisiveness. Crises, however, provide opportunities. Just as 1971 reconfigured the sense of identity and mission of Bangladesh, the current Gaza genocide has the potential to inject a new sense of mission into the OIC. The opportunity for shift remains small, but it remains open.

In the end, the question isn’t merely about the OIC’s failure, but about its future. Can the Muslim world endure yet another betrayal of its people’s hopes for justice, freedom, and dignity? Or will it finally measure up, in words but, importantly, in action that remains true to its founding mission? The OIC needs to understand that the era of symbolic gestures has passed. The stakes are just too great, the suffering too great, and the international order far too complicit. The time has come for an integrated, strategic, and internationally coordinated response—one that not merely has the people‍‍`s best interests in Gaza at heart but also retrieves the moral and political agency of the Muslim world as a whole.