Britain and Norway pledged on Thursday to spend an additional $2.9 billion in aid for Syrians by 2020, seeking to build momentum for a donor conference that the United Nations hopes will raise more than $7 billion for this year alone.
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Addressing the summit, US Secretary of State Kerry said $600 million (537 million euros) in new funding would go on urgent aid to refugees and beleaguered populations in and around Syria.
Meanwhile, it was “military escalations” by the Syrian government that led to the suspension of U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva this week but there is still a “glimpse of hope”, Germany’s foreign minister said Thursday.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the conference the humanitarian corridor between Turkey and Aleppo has been cut off as Mr Assad’s troops inflict a “siege of starvation” on the city.
Some £4.1bn was promised for this year at a conference in London – and a further £3.4bn will be handed over by 2020, David Cameron announced.
Other steps agreed included the creation of an estimated 1.1 million jobs for Syrian refugees and those living in neighbouring countries by 2018. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which took in 1 million refugees previous year, said those cutbacks were a major reason so many Syrians left refugee camps and headed for Europe.
United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura issued a statement late Wednesday saying indirect talks would be temporarily paused until February 25, but could resume sooner.
The amount pledged aims to support people in Syria as well as in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, neighbor countries that are strained by the exodus of refugees fleeing the fighting.
Cameron, who was co-hosting the conference, said a “new approach” was needed to address “one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time”.
“We are doing our best against very hard odds”, the king said, but added: “We have reached our limit”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said that he had had a “robust” discussion with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov and called on Moscow to abide by a UN Security Council resolution requiring immediate access for humanitarian agencies and an end to attacks on civilians.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who is the youngest person ever to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, attended the conference with a Syrian teenager to call attention to the plight of refugees whose schooling has been disrupted.
Elsewhere in Syria, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that food and relief aid had been delivered to more than 12,000 people in the besieged rebel-held town of Moadamiyeh, near Damascus, Wednesday.
The EU, Germany, Britain and the USA were among the biggest donors to provide food, education and job opportunities for Syrians in their homeland and neighboring countries where they have fled.
And it will seek to put all refugee children in education by 2017.
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“In supporting our refugee response you will not only be addressing the urgent needs of millions, you will be helping my country continue to do the right thing – fulfilling a critical role in our region and staying strong for the world”.
