Egeland said he would meet with United Nations donor countries throughout Monday afternoon "to express the deep frustration of the humanitarian community" in the face of the limited resources being made available to them.

"We are sent into battle against disasters and the threat of famine with no ammunition," he complained, speaking to AFP in an interview.

The worldwide humanitarian effort registered for victims of the December 26 tsunami disaster among around a dozen Indian Ocean nations is the exception, he said.

The response to that disaster was "fantastic." "It was exactly how the world should be. I had hoped that we had set new standards," the UN's aid chief said.

"But we seem now to be back to the bitter reality of late and insufficient funding."

In contrast to the 410 million dollars pledged for southern Sudan, a total of 56 million dollars had yet been received or committed to relief operations. Donor nations were billed back in October, he said.

So far, only the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Norway, plus, recently, the European Commission, had responded. "There are 20 donors in the world today and too many are sitting on the fence," he said.

Worst hit by the funding crisis is Africa. "We have received no money so far this year in most of our African humanitarian emergencies," said Egeland.

"Even in high profile and highly risky, vulnerable situations like Sudan, we have too little funding to undertake our relief operation."

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) so far has received nothing to go to Chad, which is sheltering around 200,000 refugees from neighboring Darfur, or for Ivory Coast or the Central African Republic.

Respectively, some 182 million, 39 million and 23 million dollars are needed in each of those countries.

For Democratic Republic of Congo, where 22 million dollars is needed, only five percent of costs so far have been covered.

"It's deeply frustrating because the system is not working. Donors are too slow and lives are lost," he said.

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