Syrian failure has 'incalculable' costs: UN official

By Esra Kaymak Avci

WASHINGTON

The Syria crisis is a collective political failure with "incalculable" costs for humanity, a UN commissioner said Tuesday as it marked the fifth anniversary of the Syrian civil war.

Speaking at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C., the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, criticized the international community for not being able to take proper actions for the growing refugee crisis in the region.

"It is a political failure of the parties to the conflict, the government and the opposition, it is a political failure of the countries in the region that have in various ways supported one or the other of the parties, it is a political failure of global powers that have tried in various ways to influence the process. This is a collective failure," he said.

Saying the responsibility of the refugees had to be shared globally, Grandi noted that the human cost of the Syria conflict was "becoming incalculable".

Grandi added that daily charts and figures about the overall facts of the refugees had almost "no meaning anymore because they are so huge".

"They are all in the millions of people that are affected one way or the other. This is incalculable in the sense of the world," he said.

"We should never forget that behind those numbers, they are individuals that are going through the most incredible suffering."

According to Grandi, approximately 11-12 million Syrians had to flee their homes and around 300,000 people had lost their lives during the war.

He added that the ones who sought refuge in neighbor countries were not provided enough support to find a job and sources of income and that the international community's financial contributions was covering only 15 percent of the cost of all refugees.

Stressing that Turkey has spent over $8 million for the refugees in the last five years, he blamed European countries for not showing enough support.

He also said that the richer countries could take more refugees but not in a way that it is shown through the media but in a more regular way.

Grandi also said that the UN -- in a meeting on March 30 in Geneva -- would call on the international community to take and resettle more Syrian refugees and share the burden with countries like Turkey and Jordan.

Syria has remained locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the government of Bashar al-Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Turkey, which hosts 2.7 million Syrian people since April 2011, shelters more refugees than any other country in the world, according to the UN Refugee Agency.