UN aid agencies helping Syrian refugees to get 1.6 billion euros from G7 and Gulf states

[Jonathan Fairfield]

UN aid agencies helping Syrian refugees to get 1.6 billion euros from G7 and Gulf states

The G7 group of industrial powers and Gulf states have allocated 1.6 billion euros in much-needed cash for UN aid agencies helping Syrian refugees.

The announcement, made in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, followed an initiative of Germany – a country that could take in up to a million people fleeing conflict in 2015.

“Germany alone is going to shoulder 100 million euros and with this money not only will we support the aid and humanitarian organisations, but we will also support the host nations and the receiving nations which have lent support to so many people,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters.

“And in the light of the Syria crisis, this means Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.”

For years, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan have hosted millions of refugees from Syria’s civil war.

But with conditions increasingly difficult, huge numbers of people are now abandoning camps there to seek a new life in Europe which is struggling to cope with the influx.

Separately, G7 member Japan said it would provide around 1.4 billion euros to assist Syrians and Iraqis displaced by conflict and for building peace across the Middle East and Africa.

But at the UN in New York, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe brushed off any suggestion that Japan, which accepted just 11 of around 5,000 asylum seekers last year, would take in

any refugees from the Syria conflict – the world’s worst migrant crisis since World War Two.

Source: http://www.euronews.com/2015/09/30/un-aid-agencies-helping-syrian-refugees-to-get-16-billion-euros-from-g7-and/

-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2015-09-30

[NongKhaiKid]

Are the gulf states donating cash on the condition the refugees don't start heading in their direction ?

The ever generous Saudis have also kindly offered to build 200 mosques across Germany to help the new arrivals settle in

[Vagabond1]

Indeed. I have not heard of any Gulf or Muslim country actually accepting the refugees. Except, maybe, for Turkey.