Many of them have fled to Europe, which despite the efforts of countries such as Germany and Sweden to welcome those fleeing the conflict, has been woefully unprepared for the scale of the influx and has been unable to agree on a common refugee policy.
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This is the fourth Syria donor conference.
” ‘We are doing our best against very hard odds, ‘ he said, but added: ‘We have reached our limit”.
With Syria’s five-year-long civil war raging and another attempt at peace negotiations called off in Geneva after just a few days, the London conference aims to tackle the needs of about 6-million people displaced in Syria, and more than 4-million refugees in other countries.
According to the United Nations, almost nine in 10 of the 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Jordan live below the poverty line.
The announcement comes a day after United Nations peace talks skidded to a halt, sparking doubts about whether the civil war can be ended through worldwide diplomatic talks.
The U.N.’s Ban told the conference it is “deeply disturbing that the initial steps of the talks have been undermined by the continuous lack of sufficient humanitarian access, and by a sudden increase of aerial bombing and military activities within Syria”.
Up to $6bn has been pledged for 2016, and a further $5bn in pledged support up to 2020. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which took in 1 million refugees a year ago, said those cutbacks were a major reason so many Syrians left refugee camps and headed for Europe. Its focus is on both assistance to Syrians and the humanitarian crisis faced by countries surrounding Syria.
Turkey accused Russian airstrikes of causing approximately 70,000 people to flee the city of Aleppo as Syrian government forces continued to advance on the heavily-bombed city, Reuters reported.
The extra money will help fund education and jobs for the huge numbers of refugees settling in neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey – in a “new approach” to the crisis.
UK Prime Minister, David Cameron under pressure to do more to resolve refugee crisis.
During one session, Rouba Mhaissen, founder of Sawa For Development And Aid, asked how many Syrians were in the room – and only two people put their hands up.
“We don’t want to go to… foreign countries”, said Abu Khaled al-Nassar, a refugee from the southern town of Daraa. Jordan is a country with 6.5 million people, it’s got 650,000 registered refugees.
The Observatory is a group of opposition activists monitoring the five-year-old Syria conflict.
Pledges of billions of dollars in aid at an worldwide donors’ conference in London came as military bombardments in Syria intensified and tentative peace talks in Geneva were on hold.
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Staffan de Mistura, a United Nations envoy, announced Wednesday evening that he was suspending proceedings until 25 Feb.as little ground had been covered in the talks that only started in earnest last week. The organization continues to call on the Obama Administration to couple humanitarian aid with a significant increase in the resettlement of Syrian refugees and to champion the right of refugees to work and to cross borders to secure protection. “Use of illegal weapons, and the illegal use of weapons, an epidemic of sieges, urban warfare destroying electricity and water infrastructure, deliberate attacks on schools and hospitals have accumulated into full system failure, forcing more than half of the Syrian population from their homes”, Mr. Maurer said. “There is still a conviction of all parties to maintain the principles of Vienna… based on that we can come back to the negotiating table”.
