GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Tuesday that close to 2 million children risk starving to death as the Horn of Africa faces one of its worst droughts in decades.

Addressing a closed-door donor conference held in Geneva, he said the organisation had just a fraction of the $1.4 billion it needs to respond to the drought across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.

“… The harsh truth we must acknowledge today is that we are in a race against time again to avert large-scale loss of life in 2022, and we don’t have the resources to do so,” he said in remarks delivered virtually.

Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Catherine Evans