NOUAKCHOTT , Feb 15, 2012 (IPS) - Seven out of the eight governments in the Sahel - the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan's Savannas in the south - have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger.

Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria have all called for international assistance to prevent yet another hunger crisis on the continent. Only Senegal, which will hold presidential elections later this month, has refrained from announcing an emergency, largely for political reasons.

"It's a catastrophic year. The drought is severe. We need urgent intervention to prevent a famine," warns Ahmed Weddady, national director in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation of Mauritania, the country with the world's least amount of potable water, which suffered the worst harvest shortfall in the region. A third of its population already suffers severe food insecurity.

After a drought destroyed the majority of the harvest in the Sahel late last year, rural populations throughout the region have started to run out of food in early February. That's a good six months before the next harvest is expected.

But the world's rich nations, plagued by financial crises and having just spent millions of dollars in emergency aid during last year's Somalia famine, have been slow to respond to the appeals. Barely half of the 650 million dollars needed by the United Nations (U.N.) alone have been pledged. Other aid agencies say they are equally short of funds.