At the conference, Germany also pledged $2.6 billion in new aid through 2018, and the United Kingdom said it would kick in $1.75 billion through 2020.
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The United States, represented at the conference by Secretary of State John Kerry, pledged about $600 million in new aid, bringing its total aid pledge over the past four years to $5.1 billion, the most of any nation.
Merkel told the conference that all parties were responsible for achieving a ceasefire, but especially Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Speaking at a donors conference in London that gathered representatives of about 70 countries to confront the crisis, Kerry noted after almost five years of fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced millions, “the situation on the ground is actually worse, not better”. “We will stand with you, and we still support you for as long as it takes to secure peace in Syria, to restore stability to the region, and to give Syrian refugees a chance to go back and rebuild their homes and their country”.
Australia has announced it will give AU $5 million to Iraq, and a further AU $20 million to refugees from Syria.
Previous calls for worldwide donations have come up short, and the five-year war has driven a chaotic exodus of hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees to Europe.
The European Union has pledged $3.3bn (€3bn; £2.3bn) this year and intends to “maintain this level of financing” for 2017 and beyond.
Following the suspension of peace talks in Geneva on Wednesday, worldwide reactions mostly laid blame on increased military actions from Russian Federation and the Syrian regime against opposition-held areas.
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.
While the conference has been a financial success, the prospects for ending the war in Syria look bleaker than ever, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says.
“Jordan’s King Abdullah said his country could not sustain unaided the burden of nearly 1.3 million Syrian refugees, who now make up a fifth of Jordan’s population”.
The Lutheran World Federation said that a lack of education, protection, and assistance with livelihoods are the most pressing needs of Syrian refugees.
Sixty nations, including thirty world leaders, attended the conference to discuss solutions to help end the Syrian crisis.
“Sufficient funding to guarantee the basics of life that these refugees need must be the bare minimum expected of us”, he writes in the Guardian, calling for “a new approach to humanitarian aid in the region”.
“We are at the beginning of the right track but we have to watch to see that countries are committing to what they have pledged”, he told AFP.
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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said it was deeply disturbing that his special envoy Staffan de Mistura had been forced to “pause” the Geneva talks so soon after they had started.
