NAIROBI - Donors have only pledged a third of the aid that drought-stricken East Africa needs to halt a famine that threatens 11 million people, aid agency Oxfam said on Thursday.
Hundreds of people and tens of thousands of livestock have already died from hunger in one of the region's worst droughts in years, after rains failed last November.
Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are the worst affected countries.
"Firm commitments from rich countries to fund the response to the food crisis in East Africa are not being made quickly enough," said Oxfam in a statement.
Oxfam said appeals had received $168 million for emergency food aid, against $574 million requested, a shortfall of 68 percent.
In Kenya, where the United Nations says 3.5 million people are at risk, a mere $18.7 million, or 8.3 percent, of the $225 million it needs had been pledged.
Somalia had commitments to $30 million, or 17 percent, of the $174 million requested. Only Ethiopia, with $137 million of its required $175 million and more expected, was near meeting its target, Oxfam said.
Malnutrition rates in northern Kenya were more than double the 15 percent level at which an emergency is declared.
"In Turkana, in the North West, some families are surviving on wild fruits, squirrels and insects because of a shortage of other food," the agency said.
Food shortages have provoked violent clashes between nomadic tribes that wander the region and Oxfam has said that in Somalia, thirsty children are drinking their own urine.
In Burundi, where famine has killed over 250 people, President Pierre Nkurunziza this week ordered all working Burundians to give up some of their income to the relief effort.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
