GENEVA - The United Nations announced a record appeal for victims of the Syrian conflict Monday as part of the largest request it has ever made for global humanitarian emergency financing.
Valerie Amos, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said at a news conference in Geneva that aid agencies needed nearly $13 billion for humanitarian relief operations worldwide in 2014.
“This is the largest amount we have ever had to request at the start of the year,” she said. “The complexity and scale of what we are doing is rising all the time.”
The aid is to be provided by 500 organizations, including the main U.N. agencies for food, refugees and children.
Half the total, $6.5 billion, was needed for Syria, in what Amos said was the largest-ever appeal for a single crisis. The conflict in Syria, which is nearing its fourth year, has created the worst displacement crisis since Rwanda’s genocide 20 years ago, said Antonio Guterres, the high commissioner for refugees.
“We’re facing a terrifying situation here where, by the end of 2014, substantially more of the population of Syria could be displaced or in need of humanitarian help than not,” Guterres said.
Humanitarian aid is not the solution to the crisis in Syria, Amos said, but expectations of what may emerge from a peace conference expected to begin Jan. 22 were only “modest at this point in time.”
Senior officials from Russia, the United States and the U.N. are to meet in Geneva later this week to prepare for the peace talks. But Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, sought to lower expectations last week, expressing pessimism about the outcome.
On Monday, Russia lashed out at the U.S. and its allies on the U.N. Security Council over who is to blame for chemical-weapons attacks in Syria this year.
Russia’s ambassador told the council that the Aug. 21 attack that led to Syria agreeing to give up its chemical stockpile was “staged” and a “large scale provocation.”
Vitaly Churkin compared it to the “manipulation of public opinion” that led up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The current council president, French Ambassador Gerard Araud, told reporters only that members had an “acrimonious exchange.”
Churkin did not explicitly mention the U.S. in his accusation over the attack in Ghouta, in which the U.S. government said more than 1,400 people were killed. But Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said of the U.S. and its efforts to prepare all sides for peace talks, “You cannot be an arsonist and a fireman at the same time.”
The spirited session came as the council received its first briefing from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the final report of a U.N. inspection team that last week said chemical weapons probably were used in Syria several times.
The U.N. inspection team concluded that chemical weapons were likely used in four locations in Syria, in addition to the confirmed use of the deadly nerve agent sarin in Ghouta, near Damascus, in August.
Ban said a cease-fire is needed for the discussions to have any chance in succeeding.
“We must have cessation of hostilities before we begin political dialogue on Syria in Geneva,” Ban told reporters in New York.
But if anything, the violence in Syria, which activists say has already claimed more than 120,000 lives, appears to be spiraling. Opposition groups said at least 76 people were killed in a series of airstrikes targeting the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday. They said government aircraft took to the skies again Monday, hitting opposition-held areas in the country’s north and south.
Amateur videos posted online showed the aftermath of Sunday’s airstrikes: leveled buildings, rubble-strewn streets and the smoldering wreckage of vehicles.
More than half Syria’s population of 22 million is now in need of aid, according to U.N. estimates, and with no letup in the ferocity of the conflict, relief agencies are forecasting a sharp rise in humanitarian needs in 2014.
About 1.7 million Syrians fled the fighting to seek shelter in neighboring countries in 2013, bringing the number registered with the U.N. refugee agency to 2.3 million. Although the number of new registrations has slowed, the total is expected to exceed 4 million by the end of 2014.
More than 9 million people inside the country are now in need of help, U.N. officials say, including more than 6 million who were driven from their homes by fighting, are forced to move often and face an increasingly tough battle to survive.
A survey released Monday by the International Rescue Committee, a refugee relief group, found the price of bread in many parts of Syria had risen 500 percent over two years, and more than three-quarters of the communities surveyed rated food as their greatest need.
“These findings show that starvation is now threatening large parts of the Syrian population,” David Miliband, the group’s chief executive, said in a statement released with the survey findings. “With polio on the loose, and a subzero winter already here, the people of Syria now face months of more death and despair. We are witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe that is receiving far too little attention and funding around the world.”
Although aid agencies continue to get relief supplies through to most governorates, Amos said more than 2.5 million Syrians are living in areas where fighting prevents sufficient or consistent aid deliveries, and a quarter of a million Syrians are trapped in areas under siege by the warring factions and cut off from any humanitarian aid.
An airlift of supplies from Iraq to Syria’s northeast Hassakeh governorate began Sunday, bringing aid to one area where fighting has hampered previous attempts at humanitarian relief. But Amos saw only a “modest” easing of bureaucratic barriers in response to Security Council calls for improved access for relief agencies, and was emphatic that “we are seeing no progress at all” in calls for demilitarizing schools and hospitals.
The scale and cost of Syrian relief operations, meanwhile, is straining the resources of relief agencies whose 2013 aid appeal was financed at only 60 percent. “This is not sustainable at current rates of contribution from the world; that’s why we call on other countries to do more,” said Anne Richard, an assistant secretary of state who was visiting Geneva for consultations on international relief.
“It’s clear that the appeals that are being made cannot be met only by the traditional donors,” Guterres said, appealing to emerging economies and Arab countries to support the U.N. effort.
The $13 billion appeal presented by Amos is intended to address the needs of at least 52 million people in 17 countries, including new crises in the Central African Republic, relief to victims of the typhoon in the Philippines, and the “persistent” crises in Afghanistan and Haiti, she said.
A year ago, the U.N.’s humanitarian request looking ahead to 2013 was for $8.5 billion, but Syria’s civil war forced the world body to revise that assessment upward to $13.6 billion. U.N. and other aid officials said Monday that their 2013 request will be only 60 percent funded.
Such funding gaps will leave many people hungry, lacking shelter and unprotected from violence, they said.
“When looking ahead to the 2014 plans for humanitarian response and the funds that are required, the NGO community is very concerned that this year’s appeals are still vastly underfunded and that leaves gaps in meeting immediate humanitarian needs and also slows down the recovery process for millions of civilians, leaving an unbearable scar for years to come,” said Jasmine Whitbread, CEO of Save the Children International.
Information for this article was contributed by Nick Cumming-Bruce of The New York Times and by John Heilprin, Barbara Surk, Cara Anna, Zeina Karam, Ryan Lucas, Edith M. Lederer and Nicole Winÿeld of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/17/2013