Britain promised an extra $1.76 billion by 2020, raising its total commitment to $3.4 billion. Davutoğlu said the country had so far spent $10 billion on Syrians who have been placed in refugee camps in the country.
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Following five years of civil war and as peace talks stall, world leaders meeting in London have announced they’ve raised over U.S. $10 billion in aid for Syria.
In London for the donors conference, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he had warned Moscow to stop targeting the Syrian opposition, in a “robust” phone call with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
He also said a million jobs and a million school places for refugees in bordering countries would be created.
The UN is appealing for $7.7 billion (£5.4 billion) to fund aid operations for the 13.5 million people displaced by the fighting and in need of assistance.
However, some will feel that the conference has been overshadowed by events in Geneva, where United Nations mediated talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups have broken down due to disagreements over the ongoing conflict.
This is the most that has ever been pledged in one day for a humanitarian crisis.
The Supporting Syria and the Region Conference – co-hosted by the UK, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations – aims to raise billions of dollars in aid.
The US envoy urged the other countries represented in London to increase their own contributions to help deal with what he said was a “staggering” refugee crisis.
The global aid group Mercy Corps said Thursday that intensified airstrikes and fighting around Aleppo had cut off the main humanitarian route into the Syrian city, and that tens of thousands of civilians were fleeing north toward the border with Turkey. The rest will support education in Jordan and Lebanon, including for nearly 300,000 Syrian refugees.
But Turkey, which is already hosting about 2.5 million refugees and has come under pressure from the global community to halt the flow of foreign fighters, has kept its borders sealed shut to new refugee arrivals for the past year. “We’re working closely with Lebanon and Jordan on what we call the European Union compacts, which are plans that won’t just ease the living conditions of the refugees, they will also support the economic and social resilience of Lebanon and Jordan in these very hard times”.
Hamam estimated total health sector needs to help Syrians in and around the region at $1 billion this year.
He said that “the coming days should be used to get back to the table not to secure more gains on the battlefield”.
NATO’s secretary general says that Russian airstrikes in Syria that mainly target opposition forces are “undermining efforts to find a political solution to the conflict”.
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Elsewhere in Syria, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that food and relief aid had been delivered Wednesday to more than 12,000 in the besieged rebel-held town of Moadamiyeh near Damascus.
