By Nawab Khan
BRUSSELS, March 20 (KUNA) -- The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Representative in Lebanon, Ninette Kelley, commended Kuwait's role in assisting the Syrian refugees and welcomed the country's hosting of the third international pledging conference for Syria on March 31.
"I see the support of Kuwait as extraordinary. Kuwait was the first country in the Gulf to come out with such a large contribution which they provided to the UNHCR and to other agencies in the region," she told the Kuwait news agency, KUNA, in an interview in Brussels.
"In Lebanon it has been life saving assistance and critical for us to both help and provide services to the refugees and also in a way for benefits to Lebanese communities itself. It is a partner and we are also very grateful that Kuwait has agreed to again host the conference on Syria" said Kelly.
"We need the world to once again see the region in its entirety see the great magnitude of needs and give other donors opportunity to come forward with their pledges. Last year 90 percent of all pledges for humanitarian conference was made at the Kuwait conference. That is how critical it is and most of those pledges were met," stressed the UN official.
She said that the Lebanon Crisis Response Plan will be launched in the regional funding conference in Kuwait and noted that Lebanon is part of the regional Refugee Resilience Response Plan 2015-16, also known as 3RP.
"The appeal will be for two USD billion which includes USD 1.9 billion for humanitarian response ," she said.
Earlier, speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Kelley said she is visiting the Belgian capital to meet EU officials to thank the EU for its very important support to the Syrian refugees and to brief them on the dire humanitarian situation faced by Syrian refugees in Lebanon as well as the impact this has on the political, economic and security context in the country.
As the Syrian conflict enters its fifth year, millions of refugees stay in neighbouring countries and nearly 1.2 million have fled to Lebanon which is itself a small country with a population of four million people, she said.
She noted that in proportion with its size and population Lebanon is the only country in the world which has taken so many refugees and also praised the fact that there has been no backlash against the Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
Kelley underlined that all Syrian refugees in Lebanon want to return to their homes once the conditions allow them.
Kuwait hosted the first and second aid pledging conferences for Syria in 2013 and 2014. The events successfully raised USD 3.9 billion in aid pledges, USD 1.5 billion in the first and USD 2.4 billion in the second.
Kuwait donated a total of USD 800 million in the two conferences, USD 300 million in the first and USD 500 in the second. (end) nk.bs