Syria: EU, UN appeal for aid, warn of looming humanitarian crisis

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Aid officials called Tuesday for urgently needed monetary funds to help civilians and refugees caught up in the conflict in Syria, amid warnings of a new impending humanitarian disaster in the country.

"We are quite desperately short of resources," the head of UN aid agency UNOCHA, Mark Lowcock, told reporters at a two-day donor conference in Brussels.

"Within the resources we can plausibly expect to mobilize this year we cannot meet even all the urgent needs," he said.

Displaced Syrians, who fled their homes in Deir Ezzor City, carry boxes of humanitarian aid supplied by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) at a refugee camp in Syria’s northeastern Hassakeh Province, February 26, 2018. /VCG Photo

To avoid aid programs being cut, the two-day gathering will need to raise some eight billion US dollars in pledges, he added.

At last year's gathering, six billion US dollars were pledged.

Peace talks

The conference – the seventh annual meeting on Syria's future – began Tuesday with UN and EU officials holding talks with aid groups, while government ministers were due to arrive on Wednesday.

With half a million people killed over the past seven years and millions displaced, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini called for swift political talks to put an end to the proxy war pitting Damascus, Russia and Iran against rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and their backers in Turkey and the West.

"Real, meaningful political negotiations... are clearly the only way forward," she told a news conference in Brussels.

Smoke rises from buildings in Yarmuk, a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus, during regime shelling targeting Islamic State (IS) group positions in the southern district of the capital on April 24, 2018. /VCG Photo

Besides seeking pledges for funds, the EU wants to use the conference to re-energize floundering UN-led peace talks in Geneva, which have made virtually no progress, while Russia, Iran and Turkey have launched a rival process in the Kazakh capital Astana.

Humanitarian disaster

The conference comes in the wake of strikes by the United States, France and Britain on Syrian military installations in response to the alleged chemical weapons incident in Douma which has been widely blamed on Damascus.

Assad is also pushing a military offensive to wipe out the last few rebel enclaves near Damascus.

Now a fresh humanitarian disaster looms in the rebel-held northwestern region of Idlib, the Syrian regime’s likely next target, UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura warned.

A Syrian girl evacuated from the town of Dumayr, east of the capital Damascus, looks through the window as her bus arrives in the city of Azaz in the northern countryside of Aleppo, April 20, 2018. /VCG Photo

"We… are concerned on the humanitarian side by Idlib," de Mistura told reporters, speaking alongside Mogherini.

"We hope that this would be an occasion for making sure that Idlib does not become the new Aleppo, the new Eastern Ghouta," he added, referring to two of the worst humanitarian crises of the conflict.

Aid pledges

Some 6.1 million people are now internally displaced, more than five million have fled Syria and 13 million including six million children are in need of aid, according to the UN. More than 700,000 people have been displaced since the start of this year alone.

According to EU figures, the total given by the international community after last year's conference was 7.5 billion US dollars – 25 percent more than pledged – with Germany, the United States and EU institutions leading the way.

A ruined street in Aleppo, Syria, April 22, 2018. /VCG Photo

The UN has warned however that its own appeal for money for humanitarian work in Syria this year is less than a quarter funded, receiving less than 800 million of the 3.5 billion US dollars needed.

The money would be directed at humanitarian assistance inside Syria, as well as for the Syrian refugees in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Death trap

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference on Tuesday, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi warned that Syria was becoming a “death trap” for civilians trying to flee the fighting as borders were tightly controlled and neighboring countries were overwhelmed by refugees.

"The country is becoming a trap, in some places a death trap for civilians," Grandi told Reuters.

"There is an entire population out there that cannot bear its refugees anymore, that is suffering from one of the worst ordeals in modern history."

The United Nations estimates that more than 400,000 civilians are trapped in besieged areas throughout Syria.

But this could get worse if fighting moves to the Idlib region, where two million people live, as Turkey's southern border with Syria is tightly controlled, meaning people will have nowhere to flee.

"I think we are going to lose not only a generation but a population," Grandi warned.

Source(s): AFP ,Reuters