|
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 (KUNA) -- The UN Top Humanitarian official Valerie
Amos expressed regret on Wednesday that the USD 1.5 billion pledged by the
participants at the Donor Conference in Kuwait on January 30 to help the
Syrian people have not been honored at a time the humanitarian situation is
deteriorating.
She told reporters following a closed-door meeting of the Security Council
on the humanitarian situation in Syria that out of the USD 1.5 billion pledged
in the Kuwait Conference, her office received only USD 200 million and "we
have not yet received USD 1.3 billion of the money that was pledged."
The USD 1.5 billion was to be divided as follows: USD 500 million to the
Syrian people displaced inside the country and USD 1 billion to the Syrians
who fled their country as refugees and are now living in neihbouring countries.
According to UN statistics, only 20 percent of the USD 500 million and only
19 percent of the USD 1 billion have been cashed.
On her work with the Syrian government and opposition, she said "we are
doing all we can to engage in discussions, but quite frankly, this pace at
which we were able to do this, is much slower than the pace at which the
crisis is evolving."
"We asked for USD 1.5 billion for our response for the next 6 months. Those
figures are already out of date given the projections we had at the end of
last year and where we are now," she said.
"The first two months of this year have been a real game changer. It
demands more of us, to scale up our operations, but even if we work full tilt,
the scale is outpacing whatever we do on the response side," she added, and
the funding should be stepped up to the level of needs.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant later told reporters that his and other
delegations that this sort of briefings on the humanitarian situation in syria
"should be held in public and not in consultations so we would certainly
support the fact that the next briefing of this kind should be held in public
so that a wider audience can hear the disturbing nature of the briefings that
we heard today." (end)
sj.mt
KUNA 280040 Feb 13NNNN
|