Conference seeks donors to aid Syria

BRUSSELS: Governments will seek more than $6 billion in aid for Syria at a two-day donor conference from today, which the European Union hopes will also offer Russia, Turkey and Iran a chance to renew peace efforts.

As the conflict enters its eighth devastating year, Brussels has invited some 85 governments and non-governmental agencies to raise funds for humanitarian aid, limited reconstruction and de-mining of shattered cities.

“Funding the aid response is critical,” said Robert Beer at aid agency CARE International. “But funding is only part of the picture – the systematic and deliberate blocking of aid inside Syria must end, and aid workers must be granted unimpeded access to civilians,” he said.

This, the third annual conference after London in 2016 and then in Brussels last year, could help return some electricity and water to cities heavily damaged in the West’s campaign to push out Islamic militants.

But the majority is likely to go to help the refugees outside Syria and the millions displaced within, including some 160 000 people who fled a bombing campaign by Syrian ally Russia, in eastern Ghouta near Damascus, over the past six weeks.

The $6bn target is similar to the amount raised last year, but officials say they want to go beyond that level now.

Rebuilding destroyed cities such as Aleppo is likely to take billions more dollars and cannot start until powers involved in the proxy war back a peaceful transition, away from the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the EU says.

Governments are also expected to send senior ministers, with Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Recep Akdag confirmed and, possibly, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif due, EU officials said.

The EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini is appealing to the trio of Iran, Russia and Turkey – the key powers with direct military involvement in the war – to support a lasting ceasefire to allow aid access and medical evacuations.