UN appeals for $3.9 billion for humanitarian crises

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 1 (Reuters) The United Nations asked wealthy nations to donate 3.9 billion dollars next year to address humanitarian crises touching 27 million people in 29 countries, with most of the money destined for Africa.

''These 27 million individuals seek not a handout but a hand-up, and I hope that once again we will respond -- not with pity but with practical assistance,'' outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, addressing his 10th and final annual appeal.

The single largest sum -- 1.2 billion dollars-- would again go to Sudan, a vast northeast African nation where multiple civil wars have left millions homeless and hungry, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

The next biggest recipients of the 2007 appeal were the Democratic Republic of Congo, earmarked for 687 million dollars, and the Palestinian territories, where 454 million dollas has been requested, the office said.

For each success story, where the yearly appeals have made a difference, ''there is a contrasting story where help could not be offered for lack of funds,'' said Annan, whose second five-year term as UN leader ends on December 31.

''What shall we say when our children and grandchildren ask us, 'Why? Why did we let so many women and children die unnecessarily when we had the money, we had the knowledge and we had the tools to save them?''' Annan said.

Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said the 3.9 billion dollars amounted to one-third of what Europeans spent each year on ice cream.

Three years of conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region weighed heavily on the UN effort, ''in many ways draining both resources and attention from elsewhere in Africa,'' he said.

''That is why it is so important to get out of this absolutely vicious downward spiral that we have in Darfur,'' Egeland said. ''If Darfur hadn't been there, I think there would have been more money for Burundi or the Central African Republic and so on.'' Last year's UN appeal sought 4.7 billion dollars in donations but succeeded in raising just two-thirds of the goal as of the end of October, through donations from 65 governments, the UN office said.

The biggest donors for 2006 were the United States, the European Commission, Britain, the Netherlands and Japan.

The money is channeled to recipients through UN agencies, private aid groups and international and local organisations.

As in previous years, most of the 2007 aid targets Africa, specifically Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Republic, Ivory Coast, Somalia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, the south-central Great Lakes region and the West Africa region as well as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

REUTERS SBA BST0752