Desperate Somali mothers are abandoning their dying children by the roadside as they travel to overwhelmed emergency food centres in drought-hit eastern Africa, UN aid officials said yesterday. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme, told a conference in Rome that a combination of natural disaster and regional conflict was affecting more than 12mn people. “We are seeing all the points able to distribute food completely overwhelmed,” she said, adding that a camp in Dadaab in Kenya that was built for 90,000 people now housed 400,000. “We want to make sure the supplies are there along the road because some of them are becoming roads of death where mothers are having to abandon their children who are too weak to make it or who have died along the way,” she said. Women and children were among the most at risk in the crisis, Sheeran said, calling it the “children’s famine” given the number of children at risk of death or permanent stunting of their brains and bodies due to hunger. The WFP will feed 2.5mn malnourished children and is trying to raise money for more, she said. “I believe it is the children’s famine, because the ones who are the weakest are the children and those are the ones we’re seeing are the least likely to make it,” Sheeran said. “We’ve heard of women making the horrible choice of leaving behind their weaker children to save the stronger ones or having children die in their arms.” Ministers and senior officials met at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome yesterday to discuss how to mobilise aid following the worst drought in decades in a region stretching from Somalia to Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti. The WFP said it needed an extra $360mn in urgent funds. Oxfam said that overall another $1bn was needed to handle the situation. The World Bank said in a statement it was providing more than $500mn to assist drought victims, in addition to $12mn in immediate aid to help those worst hit. Amid warnings that urgent action was required to stop a humanitarian disaster spreading across the Horn of Africa, officials said there was still a chance to support people and help them resume livelihoods as farmers, fishers and herders. Governments worldwide and the UN have been criticised for their slow response to the severe drought but they face severe problems getting aid to a region in the grip of a raging conflict across much of southern Somalia. The UN has declared a famine in two regions of Somalia and warned it could spread further afield. Years of anarchic conflict in southern Somalia have exacerbated the emergency, preventing aid agencies from helping communities in the area. Nearly 135,000 Somalis have fled since January, mainly to neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia. The WFP has said it cannot reach more than 2mn Somalis facing starvation in areas controlled by Islamist militants, who imposed a food aid ban in 2010 and have regularly threatened relief groups.  Oxfam’s Barbara Stocking said it was very difficult for staff to access parts of Somalia but it was working with local partners to provide aid and they were trying to help them scale up their support in the current crisis. The UN yesterday urged “massive” action for the drought-stricken Horn of Africa region but charities slammed low aid pledges ahead of talks with donor countries in Nairobi this week. “The catastrophic situation demands massive and urgent international aid,” said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which hosted yesterday emergency meeting of UN aid agencies and charities in Rome. “It is imperative to stop the famine” declared by the UN this month in two insurgent-held areas of southern Somalia, Diouf said. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) announced at the talks that it would begin an airlift of food aid today into the Somali capital Mogadishu, as well as to eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya on the border with Somalia. An estimated 3.7mn people in Somalia—around a third of the population—are on the brink of starvation andmns more in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have been struck by the worst drought in the region in 60 years. Officials said at yesterday meeting the UN has received about $1bn since first launching an appeal for the region in November 2010 but needs abn more by the end of the year to cope with the emergency. But charities voiced disappointment at the international response. “It is shameful that only a few of the richest and powerful economies were willing to demonstrate today their commitment to saving the lives of many of the poorest and most vulnerable,” said Barbara Stocking, the head of Oxfam. U2 band frontman and anti-poverty campaigner Bono’s charity ONE said: “The political will manifested in Rome should be followed by action.” French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire called for the creation of a rapid reaction unit within FAO to respond to food crises, more research into drought-resilient crops and a crackdown on high food prices. “If we don’t take the necessary measures, famine will be the scandal of this century,” Le Maire said. He also berated the international community for having “failed” to ensure food security in a world affected by climate change. Le Maire said the issue would be discussed at “the donor conference in Nairobi in two days’ time”. A spokesman for FAO later specified this was not a pledging conference but a regular meeting to which donors had been invited.