Sadako Ogata: It's very difficult to get sympathy and commitment to solve long-running conflicts

The visit comes amid growing concern that the problems of Africa have been neglected with international attention diverted to the Kosovo crisis.

Mrs Ogata has stressed that the United Nations still devotes 50% of its entire resources to African refugees.

"My mission is to protect all refugees," said Mrs Ogata, after arriving in Nairobi on Sunday.

"Even if there is a political interest and a logistical operation in Kosovo, it does not mean that refugees in other parts of the world should be disregarded or should be forgotten."

The main focus of her trip, which will also take in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the one million refugees of central Africa, victims of civil wars and genocide.

She is meeting senior government ministers in Rwanda and Burundi and visiting refugee settlements during her stay in the region, but it is not clear whether Congolese officials will agree to see her.

Conflict to blame

Both Rwanda and Burundi, have been torn apart by conflict between ethnic Tutsis and Hutus - which has caused massive population displacement.

A third of the world's refugees and displaced people are in Africa

Some of these refugees are now returning home. But others in the Great Lakes region are still fleeing.

The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has dragged in at least six foreign armies, has forced out tens of thousands.

Almost every day for the past few months, terrified civilians have clambered aboard boats on Lake Tanganyika to be taken to safety in Tanzania.

But even as refugees have been fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo in the east, more have crossed into the country from the west - escaping both the renewed war in neighbouring Angola, and continued fighting in the Republic of Congo.

The international community has been struggling to cope. Earlier this month, the UN food agency - WFP - announced it had run short of supplies to feed the refugees in the Great Lakes region.

It has now been forced to cut their rations.

African refugees

Africa has 3.3 million refugees. Combined with the displaced and repatriated, the UNHCR cares for some 6.5 million in all on the continent, or nearly one third of the worldwide total.

Many are victims of conflicts that have raged for years.

Others have been newly displaced by a rash of fresh fighting across the continent.

The UNHCR estimates that the war in the last year between Ethiopia and Eritrea has displaced more than 600,000 people.