UN warns of humanitarian crisis in Niger
Jan Egeland said 2.5 million people in Niger are in desperate need of food, including 800,000 children who are malnourished.
Some 150,000 of those children "will die very soon because they are severely malnourished unless we really get to step up our operation".
Meanwhile, humanitarian groups warned that rains and high crop prices have left millions suffering severe foot shortages across Africa.
Diminishing water supplies and dry pastures also were fuelling conflict among rival tribes, and child malnutrition was reportedly rising in parts of the Greater Horn of Africa region, said the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
The food shortages were concentrated in Ethiopia, where more than half of the 18 million affected lived, the report said.
At least half of neighbouring Eritrea's population of 4.5 million was in peril, as well as 2.69 million in Uganda, the report said.
Other countries affected included Sudan, Djibouti, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi and Somalia.
"In agricultural areas, rainfall performance and crop prospects are mixed," the report said. "Crop production in eastern and coastal areas of the region will be below average, due to insufficient and poorly distributed rainfall."
Members of cattle herding communities "continue to be the most food insecure and vulnerable group", according to the report.
Landlocked Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, was devastated by an invasion of locusts that ate everything green last year and was then hit by drought that lasted until earlier this month, Mr Egeland said.
The UN first appealed for assistance for Niger in November and got almost no response. Another appeal for $16 million (€13.2m) in March got about $1m.
The latest appeal on May 25 for $30m dollars has received about $10m, but "it's still too little", he said.
"We are having now an acute humanitarian crisis in Niger in which children are dying as we speak," Mr Egeland told a group of journalists. "We could have prevented this and the world community didn't."
He said there were no figures on the number of deaths in Niger, but he cited a report from one feeding centre where 14 of the 61 severely malnourished children that were being treated last week died.
"In nowhere in the world is the gap between our capacity to act and the number of lives at risk as great as Niger today," he said.
At the moment, he said, the UN is building up a relief operation that will cover several hundred thousand people. It is sending 23,000 metric tons of food to meet the urgent needs of 1.2 million people.
"We believe we will be able to feed two million people directly or indirectly through the various operations, with the government within the next two months ... if we get the funding," Mr Egeland said.
But the UN believes that 3.6 million people will need emergency assistance about one-third of the country's population of more than 10 million, he said. Mr Egeland said the latest appeal had received positive responses from the EU which has committed $5.5m (€4.5m), more than half a dozen European countries, the United Arab Emirates and the US.
