UN Targets $6.5 Billion in Aid for Syria; Education Among Top Priorities

Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al Ahmed al Sabah opened the Syrian Donors Conference in Kuwait City with a pledge of $500 million to support U.N. aid efforts. In December of 2013, the U.N. made an appeal for $6.5 billion for Syrian aid, a $2.5 billion increase over last year’s appeal, which was only 40 per cent funded.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, the U.N. envoy for education, emphasized the importance of aid money used for education. “There are children on the streets, there are children begging, in child labor, turning to violence,” Brown said. “Unless we do something about this we have got a huge social problem with dislocation in Lebanon and other areas where refugees are based. If you don’t give children education, they lose hope…. We end up with a generation that has lost hope for the future.”

The United States, which has contributed $1.7 billion to Syrian victims, pledged $380 million in support. In total, the conference raised $2.4 billion for Syrian aid—more than a third of the U.N.’s goal. However, reports estimate that only 70 per cent of $1.5 billion raised last year has reached the U.N. Still, the news is encouraging for a country that “face[s] unprecedented demands” because of the crisis, according to the U.N.’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Creative Commons Love: DFID – UK Department for International Development on Flickr.com

Written by Alex Leedom