Millions more are going hungry across the world as governments fail to deliver on promised aid, officials warned Thursday on World Food Day.

Only a tenth of the some 22 billion euros in assistance for food and agriculture pledged for 2008 has reached the UN food agency, its chief Jacques Diouf said Thursday.

Despite enthusiastic speeches and financial commitments, we have received only a tiny part of what was pledged," Diouf said as he marked World Food Day at the Rome headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

His comments came as an expert warned that soaring food prices had pushed up the number of people in the world classed as hungry to 925 million, while more than 100 million had been driven into extreme poverty.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said in a statement in Geneva that the whole system of food production needed to be radically overhauled to ensure an equitable outcome.

"The violation on a daily basis of the right to food for hundreds of millions of people worldwide has its roots in an outdated and inadequate production system, rather than in the actual quantity of food available," he said.

In Dublin former UN secretary general Kofi Annan said aid for the world's hungry must not be hit by the global financial crisis which cannot be "an excuse for inaction" at a "critical juncture".

"We must maintain our resolve. We can end hunger and poverty. Doing so is critical to Africa and to a healthy and resilient global food system," he told a conference Thursday aimed at highlighting global hunger and advocating better ways to combat it.

Article source: AFP
Photo: Feeding clinic at Omdurman, Sudan for people displaced by war and famine, by Dave Blume