Donors pledge $4.4b, way short of UN needs
EU says Russia and Iran have duty to help wind down Syria war now in its eighth year
IInternational donors yesterday pledged $4.4 billion in aid for civilians caught up in the Syrian civil war — well short of what the UN says is needed for humanitarian work in Syria and neighbouring countries.
The sum committed at a two-day conference in Brussels was less than half of the $9 billion the United Nations says is needed this year to help those in need inside Syria and living as refugees in neighbouring countries.
The head of the UN aid agency UNOCHA called the $4.4 billion “a good start” but a group of nine international aid organisations said the conference “did not go nearly far enough”.
“My best guess is that by the end of the day we will have heard pledges for 2018 of $4.4 billion,” Mark Lowcock, the head of UNOCHA, told a news conference.
He added that pledges of a further $3.3 billion for 2019 and after were expected at the conference, attended by more than 80 countries, aid groups and agencies.
Britain announced £450 million (Dh2.31 billion) for 2018 and another £300 million for 2019, while Germany said it would donate more than a billion euros and the EU pledged some 560 milllion euros.
But several major donors including the United States have not yet confirmed their pledges, Lowcock said, because of ongoing internal budget wrangling.
The EU yesterday urged Russia and Iran to pressure Damascus to engage in talks to end Syria’s bloody civil war, as international donors pledged billions of dollars to help civilians caught up in the conflict.
EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said Moscow and Tehran, Bashar Al Assad’s key supporters, had a duty to help wind down the war, now in its eighth year. Europe is also keen to use the conference to restart UN-led talks in Geneva which have made little progress in eight rounds.
This was in part because Al Assad’s regime has paid little interest in them, and Russia, Iran and Turkey launched a rival process in the Kazakh capital Astana last year.
1 ₣ b pledged by Germany to the UN donor conference
Sustainable peace
“We need in particular Russia, Iran to exercise pressure on Damascus so that it accepts to sit at the table under UN auspices,” Mogherini said as she arrived for the gathering, the seventh of its kind.
“We believe that the only sustainable peace for Syria will be linked to a political process under UN auspices.”
Moscow has repeatedly defended Syria at the UN, most recently over the suspected chemical attack in the town of Douma, blamed by Western powers on Al Assad’s forces.
Britain’s development minister Penny Mordaunt will urge delegates at the conference to step up the pressure on Moscow. “In wielding its UN veto 12 times on Syria, [Russia] has given a green flag to Al Assad to perpetrate human rights atrocities against his own people,” Mordaunt will say, according to her office.