The west African nation of Niger is suffering "an acute humanitarian crisis" in which children are dying because the world community ignored U.N. appeals for urgent aid, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Tuesday. The Associated Press quoted Jan Egeland as saying that 2.5 million people are in desperate need of food, including 800,000 malnourished children. Some 150,000 of those children will die soon "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. The United Nations first appealed for assistance for Niger in November and got almost no response. Another appeal for $16 million in March got about $1 million. The latest appeal on May 25 for $30 million has received about $10 million. "We are having now an acute humanitarian crisis in Niger in which children are dying as we speak," Egeland said. "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 center 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," Egeland said. He said the United Nations is sending 23,000 metric tons of food to meet the urgent needs of 1.2 million people, he said. But the world body 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. As of July 1, the United States had committed over $1.6 million to nutritional, agricultural and livestock programs to implementing partners. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has appealed for $4 million for agricultural programs in Niger and received just $650,000 from Sweden, he said.
