Brussels: An international conference is being held by the European Union on Thursday to raise money for Syria, where an earthquake earlier this year made the already terrible situation of people caught in war since 2011 even worse.
Three UN organisations have warned that the needs are "enormous" and that only a tenth of the funding required for projects to aid Syrian citizens and refugees in the area in 2023 has been secured.
The three men who jointly oversee the UN-led response to the Syrian crisis, Martin Griffiths, Filippo Grandi, and Achim Steiner, said, "We need much greater financial support from the international community."
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"More assistance is urgently needed for the Syrian people and those hosting them. The needs are huge, they declared.
The UNHCR estimates that more than 14 million Syrians have fled their homes since 2011, and that 6.8 million of them are still displaced inside of Syria, where almost the entire population is subsistence-level.
In addition to Egypt, nearby Turkiye, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq also host about 5.5 million Syrian refugees. The UN chiefs expressed their hope for pledges on par with the $6.7 billion made available for Syria and its neighbours at a conference last year.
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They cautioned that the UN's plans for $5.4 billion in internal aid and $5.8 billion for Syrians living elsewhere in the world this year were gravely underfunded.
"Humanitarian funding for Syria is not keeping pace with rapidly increasing needs," said Janez Lenarcic, the conference's host and the top humanitarian aid and crisis management official for the EU.
Initially peaceful demonstrations against President Bashar al Assad's rule in Syria turned into a multi-front conflict that involved Turkey, Russia, Iran, and other nations in 2011. More than 350,000 people have died in the conflict.
Russia eventually tipped the scales in Assad's favour, and he was warmly welcomed at an Arab summit last month, ending years of isolation from his fellow regional leaders.
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But because the West won't help Assad, radical Islamist organisations and rebels supported by Turkey, as well as a US-backed Kurdish militia, continue to hold sway over a sizable portion of Syria.
Lenarcic also demanded that more extensive humanitarian access be provided from Turkiye to Syria's northwest.