Nations pledge $11B to aid Syrian refugees

U.S. will donate $900M, Kerry says

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, 18, (left) and 17-year-old Syrian refugee Mezon al-Melihan appear Thursday at a donor conference in London to push for $1.4 billion in education aid for children in Syria and refugee camps.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, 18, (left) and 17-year-old Syrian refugee Mezon al-Melihan appear Thursday at a donor conference in London to push for $1.4 billion in education aid for children in Syria and refugee camps.

LONDON -- World leaders on Thursday pledged almost $11 billion to help fund schools, shelter and jobs for refugees from Syria's civil war.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the money "will save lives, will give hope, will give people the chance of a future."

But diplomats from 79 countries attending a conference in London acknowledged dim prospects for a swift end to the conflict. Peace talks have been suspended while fighting has been intensifying and millions of Syrians are suffering from bombardment, homelessness and hunger.

"The situation in Syria is as close to hell as we are likely to find on this Earth," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was no more upbeat.

"After almost five years of fighting, it's pretty incredible that as we come here in London in 2016, the situation on the ground is actually worse," he said.

The one-day meeting at a conference center near the Palace of Westminster aspired to give new urgency to the effort to help the 4.6 million Syrians who have sought refuge in neighboring countries including Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Another 6 million people or more are displaced within Syria, and a quarter of a million have been killed.

Previous calls for international donations have come up short, and the five-year war has led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees and other migrants to Europe.

Thursday's pledges are intended to slow that migration, by funding schools and creating secure jobs for Syrian refugees in the Middle East, and economic support for the overburdened host nations.

Cameron said participants had pledged almost $6 billion for 2016 and another $5 billion by 2020.

Kerry said the United States would send more than $900 million total, with $600 million going to the U.N. and refugee agencies for emergency food, shelter and health in Syria and neighboring countries.

Much of the rest will go to provide schooling for refugee children in Jordan and Lebanon.

About a quarter of all U.S. humanitarian aid last year was tied to the Syrian war. According to State Department calculations, the latest donation raises U.S. total funding to $5.1 billion, the largest of any country by far.

The British leader called the conference -- hosted by the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the U.N. -- "a real breakthrough, not just in terms of money but in terms of how we handle these refugee crises."

The tally falls short of the $9 billion the U.N. and regional countries said was needed for 2016 alone, but it was a significant improvement on previous fundraising efforts.

Last year's conference, in Kuwait, raised just half its $7 billion target, forcing cuts to programs such as refugee food aid.

Aid groups welcomed the money but criticized the international community for allowing the war to go on. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the world had shown a "lack of political action and ambition to resolve the crisis."

"Humanitarian aid is always just a quick fix and never enough," he said.

David Miliband, a former British foreign secretary who now heads the International Rescue Committee, has called for 1 million work permits for Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, saying it was time to "end the fiction" that the crisis was a short-term problem.

"And that's only possible if those countries are offered massive, long-term financing for adjusting their economic and social infrastructure to meet the new reality," he said.

"There has to be an economic offer both to the countries and to the refugees."

Simon O'Connell, the executive director of Mercy Corps Europe, said even if the fighting ended tomorrow it will take a decade or longer to rebuild Syria enough so millions of refugees can go home.

"There's been a huge breakdown in the social fabric inside Syria," he said at the conference. "It will take time for people to go home, rebuild their lives and livelihoods."

Cameron told reporters that the international community would stand with Syrians for "as long as it takes to secure peace," acknowledging that the goals of a cease-fire followed by a transitional government remained distant.

Peace Talks in 'Recess'

Thursday's meeting opened hours after the latest U.N.-led bid to start peace talks in Geneva was suspended for three weeks until at least Feb. 25.

The pause was agreed upon after the opposition and government delegations failed to agree on conditions required to get them started.

In his speech at the London conference, Kerry characterized the pause as a "temporary recess."

As a precondition for negotiations, the opposition has insisted on a halt to the bombing of civilian areas by Russian warplanes and the Syrian government it backs. It also demanded that sieges be lifted to allow humanitarian access.

Kerry adopted an identical stance Thursday.

In remarks to reporters, Kerry said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had "agreed we need to discuss" how to implement a cease-fire and get the Syrian government and the opposition to allow humanitarian access to besieged areas.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said the two also had agreed to try to ensure the pause in the talks was as short as possible.

Neither statement mentioned any concrete measures.

"We will, I am confident, find a way to move forward," said Kerry, standing alongside British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

Hammond said the diplomats at the donor conference are all "very keen to keep the momentum going" in the talks and suggested there is no better option on the table.

"We recognize it's difficult for the regime to be at the table talking to the opposition," he said.

"It's difficult for the opposition to talk to the regime when their people at home are being killed through bombing and other forms of attack.

"But we have to continue this process. It's the only way to get a solution to the disaster that is engulfing Syria."

Russia declined to send President Vladimir Putin or a senior minister to the event but was represented by its ambassador to London, Alexander Yakovenko.

There were few Syrians at the conference. Neither President Bashar Assad's government nor opposition groups participated.

The Syrian government, backed by Russian airstrikes, has increased the pace of attacks on opposition forces in recent days as the talks faltered.

The U.N.'s Ban said at the conference that it was "deeply disturbing that the initial steps of the talks have been undermined by the continuous lack of sufficient humanitarian access, and by a sudden increase of aerial bombing and military activities within Syria."

He said that "the coming days should be used to get back to the table, not to secure more gains on the battlefield."

Jordan Feels Strain

The stalled peace process increases pressure on donor countries to commit long-term aid to the war's victims.

Aid workers warn of a "lost generation" of Syrians if some 700,000 refugee children who are not attending school don't get an education.

Education campaigner Malala Yousafzai and 17-year-old Syrian refugee Mezon al-Melihan met with Cameron and other leaders to press for $1.4 billion for education for children in Syria and its neighbors.

"Without education, who will bring peace?" al-Melihan said.

Syria's neighbors had warned the conference that the burden of so many newcomers was becoming intolerable.

Jordan's King Abdullah II said his country housed almost 1.3 million Syrian refugees, a fifth of Jordan's population.

The Jordanian figure includes all Syrians in the country; the U.N. says it has registered 630,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan.

"We have reached our limit," the king said. "Our country will continue to do what we can do to help those in need, but it cannot be at the expense of our own people's welfare.

"Sooner or later, I think the dam is going to burst," said the king.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at the conference that 10,000 Syrians who have fled bombing in the city of Aleppo are waiting at the Turkish border, and as many as 70,000 others are on the way. Amateur video showed thousands, including women and children, running with their belongings toward the frontier.

Turkey said it has taken in more than 2.5 million Syrians since the war began in 2011.

In Jordan's Zaatari refugee camp, home to 79,000 Syrians, some agreed with conference organizers that the best future for refugees was in their home region.

"We don't want to go to ... foreign countries," said Abu Khaled al-Nassar, a refugee from the southern town of Daraa. "With all my respect to these countries, the traditions are different, and we live here in an Arab country, Jordan. We understand each other.

"So we call on the donor countries to support us with investments in order to find jobs. We don't want to go to Europe -- we will stay here, work and produce."

Donor countries also want to see the refugees employed on infrastructure projects that also would benefit the host nations like Lebanon and Jordan, or in special business zones where Syrians and area people can work side by side.

New ideas also include encouraging large-scale private foreign investment in the region and Europe granting easier access to products made there. The International Labor Organization envisions labor-intensive infrastructure projects, such as building water cisterns, schools and roads. Germany has proposed a donor-funded program to create 500,000 short-term jobs for refugees in the region.

Meanwhile, the World Bank is helping to set up cheap loans for host countries, with donors covering interest payments. Jordan has balked at the idea of having to borrow for anything linked to the refugee crisis, but has welcomed zero-interest financing for development programs it had to put on hold in recent years.

Information for this article was contributed by Jill Lawless, Bradley Klapper, Omar Akour, Zeina Karam, Nataliya Vasilyeva and Karin Laub of The Associated Press and by Carol Morello of The Washington Post.

A Section on 02/05/2016

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