EU Trebles Assistance Pledge for Syrians in 2016

President of the European Council Donald Tusk speaks to donors at the Syria Conference in London, Britain, 04 February 2016. Photo EPA/BGNES

The European Union has pledged over EUR 3 B to help the Syrians living inside the country as well as the refugees and the neighbouring countries hosting them in 2016.  

The pledge was made on Thursday at the 'Supporting Syria and the Region' conference in London, the European Commission said in a statement. The conference, co-hosted by the UK, Germany, Kuwait, Norway, and the UN, aims to raise significant new funding to meet the immediate and longer-term needs of the people affected by the civil war in Syria. Leaders of some 70 nations have gathered to pledge financial support to Syria.

The new pledge of financial support is triple the amount promised at the last donor conference in Kuwait in March of last year and comes on top of the EUR 5 B which the EU has already committed in response to the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II.

The war in Syria has claimed more than 250,000 lives, most of them civilians, over the past five years. Eighteen million people need help, including 13.5 million inside thr country. Over 4.6 million people have fled the war, mostly to neughbouring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, while 6.5 million people are internally-displaced.

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