The United Nations has issued an urgent appeal for more funds for Africa, saying it is unable to meet the needs of at least eight impoverished countries on the continent.
While much of the west basks in a massive economic boom, the UN says it has received only £271 million of the £612 million it needs to assist 12 million needy people in Africa.
The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, has expressed "alarm" at the poor response of the international community to earlier appeals. He contrasted this with the unprecedented economic growth and healthy budget surplus in many developed countries.
Mr Annan expressed concern last month that the large amounts of aid money flowing to Kosovo were adversely affecting support for the developing world. This is borne out by the latest figures, which show that the international community has failed to contribute anything to the UN's appeal for victims of the civil war in the Republic of the Congo. In contrast, the west has pledged over £1.5 billion to help rebuild Kosovo.
Because of the shortfall in contributions from traditional donor countries, "humanitarian programmes have had to be cut back and even life-saving assistance in many instances is not being provided where it is urgently required", the UN spokesman, Mr Fred Eckhard, said.
Among countries where urgent needs could not be met, he listed Angola, Somalia, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Virtually all are either the scene of continuing conflicts or are trying to make precarious peace accords work.
Mr Eckhard said supplies were simply insufficient to assist two million people in Angola affected by fighting between the government and rebels of UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola).
In southern and central Somalia, at least one million people were threatened with famine as a result of persistent conflict, six consecutive poor harvests and grim prospects for the latest one.
The Under Secretary-General, MrVieira de Mello, the head of UN humanitarian affairs, said that of the £11 million needed for the Republic of the Congo, also involved in a civil war, not a single dollar had been received.
"In the developed world, many countries are experiencing unprecedented economic growth and robust budget surpluses. Yet international aid budgets continue to stagnate or decline," Mr Eckhard said.
"The secretary-general appeals to donors to make a special effort now to help the victims of conflicts and natural disasters in Africa."
The European Commission is planning to make cuts in its development budget, partly in response to the outlay on Kosovo. Its proposals involve a 10 per cent reduction in all external spending and a 19 per cent cut in the humanitarian aid budget.
However, members of the European Parliament have pledged to fight the proposals. The British MEP, Ms Glenys Kinnock, recently warned that it was "unacceptable" to take money away from the world's poorest nations to pay for the crisis in Kosovo.
Kosovo needs huge investment, but you cannot justify taking that funding from the urgent needs of Africa, including some of the world's poorest countries, like Sierra Leone," she said last month.
The Irish aid agency, Trocaire, last week called on western governments not to forget about the needs of other regions of the world in their rush to aid Kosovo.
Mr Annan has also warned African governments to cut back on their military expenditure in order to free up money for development. In a speech delivered last May in Ethiopia - which is currently fighting with neighbouring Eritrea - he suggested that military expenditure be reduced to no more than 1.5 per cent of a country's gross domestic product.
Aid budgets in many western countries have been cut back in recent year, although Ireland has bucked this trend by steadily increasing its development assistance, albeit from a low level.