The U.N. World Food Program is due to begin an emergency airlift Tuesday of food to the drought-stricken Horn of Africa.
The WFP said Monday that planes will carry food to the Somali capital of Mogadishu, eastern Ethiopia, and northern Kenya, near the border with Somalia.
WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said this will be the first airlift of food since the U.N. declared a famine in two parts of Somalia last week.
The United Nations says "massive" action is needed to save millions of people living in the Horn of Africa from starvation. The U.S. Agency for International Development says more than 11 million people are now in need of emergency aid to survive.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization hosted an emergency meeting on the drought Monday in Rome.
A donors' conference will be held Wednesday in Kenya's capital, Nairobi. The U.N. is seeking pledges of $1.6 billion to help the millions of malnourished people - many of them children.
In Somalia, described as the "epicenter of the famine," Sheeran said about one-third of the population is facing starvation. USAID reports more than 600,000 Somalis have fled to neighboring countries.
Sheeran also said that in Somalia there are soaring levels of malnutrition. She described desperate mothers forced to abandon their children along roadsides as they traveled to refugee camps in neighboring Kenya.
Access to southern Somalia has been hampered by the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab, which controls much of the region.
The group has rejected the U.N. declaration of famine in parts of Somalia, and has banned many aid groups from operating in territory it controls.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.