'Kids are dying as we speak'

2005-07-20 09:59

New York - The West African nation of Niger is suffering "an acute humanitarian crisis" in which children are dying because the world community has ignored United Nations (UN) appeals for urgent aid, the UN humanitarian chief said on Tuesday.

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".

The landlocked country, one of the poorest 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, he said.

Poor responses

The UN first appealed for assistance for Niger in November and got almost no response. Another appeal for $16m in March got about $1m. The latest appeal on May 25 for $30m 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," said Egeland. "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.

"Nowhere in the world is the gap between our capacity to act and the number of lives at risk as great as Niger today," Egeland said. "I hope within weeks, we will have been able to close that gap."

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, he said.

Millions of hungry people to feed

"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," Egeland said.

But the UN believes 3.6 million people will need emergency assistance - about one-third of the country's population of more than 10 million, he said.

Egeland said the latest appeal had received positive responses from the European Union (EU) which has committed $5.5m, more than half a dozen European countries, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.

As of July 1, the US had committed over $1.6m to nutritional, agricultural and livestock programs.

"The least funding so far is for agricultural programmes which I regret because those are the programmes that can get people out of this," he said, explaining people are now slaughtering or selling their cattle used for breeding.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has appealed for $4m and received just $650 000 from Sweden, he said.

- AP