Former UN leader Kofi Annan says 10,000 children in the Third World will die from malnutrition in just one day. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone/Associated Press)

Wealthy countries are backing out of commitments to help feed the world's hungry as a result of the growing financial crisis, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan said Thursday.

Speaking at an international conference on food aid, Annan said 10,000 children in the Third World will die from malnutrition on Thursday alone — a tragedy that should be equal to the collapse of a bank.

"The financial crisis deserves urgent attention and focus. But so does the question of hunger," Annan told journalists at the Fighting Hunger conference in Ireland. "Millions are liable to die [this year].

About 200 foreign-aid experts from Europe, Africa and the United States are gathered for the one-day conference in Dublin.

Annan said commitments to food aid are on "shaky ground" as countries scramble to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into failing banks.

"I agree that politicians being what they are, and under pressure from their own voters to improve their own local economic conditions — they will take their eyes off of poverty," he said.

Pledges were an illusion: Annan

The former UN secretary general questioned whether governments were serious when they promised aid at a 2005 Group of Eight summit in Scotland and at a food summit in Rome this June.

Palestinian farmer Taleea Abu Ras, 40, carries wheat during harvest in the West Bank village of Sawyah in June. Annan is urging wealthy countries not to back out of commitments to help feed the world's hungry, despite the financial crisis. (Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press)

The G8 meeting resulted in promises to boost development aid to Africa to $50 billion US by 2010, while the Rome food summit ended with countries committing $12 billion US toward measures to modernize agricultural practices. Those measures would include promises to buy more food from small African farmers and to help them boost their yields with fertilizer, high-tech seeds, irrigation and mechanical equipment.

Annan suggested that the $12 billion pledge was an illusion.

"How much of that $12 billion has been paid out? How much of that $12 billion was new money? How much of it had been pledged before and pledged again?" he asked.

Annan would not identify specific nations and their financial shortcomings on aid, nor did several representatives of aid organizations at the conference, saying it would be foolish to risk annoying potential sources of funding.

If the promises were kept, Third World hunger would decline, Annan said, but instead experts at the conference agreed the number of hungry is likely to grow by 50 million to 970 million this year.

Poor hit hardest by rising costs: poll

Annan's comments come the same day as a new poll saying the weight of rising food and energy costs is bearing down heavily on much of the global population, hitting them hard at the pumps and dinner table.

But in terms of higher food prices, Canada appeared to fare better than most of the other 25 countries participating in the poll, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation World Service.

Findings released Wednesday reveal that with the exception of China, a majority of those surveyed in each country reported being negatively affected by rising costs of food, fuel and electricity. Sixty per cent of people said they have been affected "a great deal" by high food and energy prices.

Not surprisingly, Canada, along with other developed nations including Australia, Germany and the U.K., registered comparatively low percentages among those who said rising food costs had affected them.

Among Canadians surveyed, 27 per cent said they were affected "a great deal" — the smallest percentage of all the countries.

Developing countries most affected

Meanwhile, those in developing nations were among the hardest hit, with many reporting they are cutting back on what they eat because of high food costs. Some 63 per cent in the Philippines and Panama and 61 per cent in Kenya reported eating less.

What's more, nearly half of those polled said higher costs of food were causing them to change their diet, which again was most significant in developing countries.

Seventy-one per cent in Panama, 67 per cent in Egypt and 64 per cent in Kenya said they had changed what they eat. Only 24 per cent of Canadians who were surveyed said they had eaten less overall, and 36 per cent reported changing what they eat.

The surveys were mainly conducted in July and August, a period when commodity prices weren't rising any more, but ripple effects were still being felt in households because of higher food prices in the different countries, said Doug Miller, chairman of GlobeScan Incorporated in London.

"This research shows that people around the world are being deeply affected, but particularly people earning the least in some of the poorest countries are being deeply affected by rising food and energy crises," said Miller, whose company conducted the survey.

"Governments would be very ill-advised to lose sight of the need to address the daily commodity needs of their citizens at the household level, even in the midst of the financial crisis."

Rising loonie insulated Canada

The sharp rise and strength of the loonie relative to the U.S. dollar in the lead-up to the survey was likely a factor in why Canada fared better than other countries, said Adam Finn, acting chair in the department of marketing, business economics and law at the University of Alberta.

"I think it was primarily the change in the dollar value that cushioned Canadians from having to really change their lifestyle as much as they might have had to do," he said.

"In the last couple of months, the Canadian dollar has actually tumbled, so maybe we'll see some of the effects come through. Of course, the commodity prices have also dropped back significantly."

Another factor is that people in developing nations spend a higher proportion of income on food and, to some extent, energy relative to Canada, Finn said.

"Even if it increases, it doesn't change their lifestyle as much as in a country where people are spending 50 per cent of their income on food just to get by even prior to these changes," he said. "Of course, if food prices go up, they're much more severely influenced."

While the majority of Canadians weren't affected as much by high food costs, energy was a different story.

Some 42 per cent said that rising energy costs had affected them a great deal, much closer to the average of all countries surveyed.

However, Miller noted it wasn't as serious an issue as it is in Egypt, for instance, where a whopping 93 per cent reported being affected a great deal by high energy prices.

Sample size for the poll was 27,319 adults from 26 countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Spain, South Korea, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and United States.

The margin of error for the countries ranged from 2.5 to four percentage points, 19 times out of 20.