ANKARA
Number of Syrians who fled the violence in their country and took shelter in Turkey reached 500,000.
According to the officials of the United Nations that in 21 Turkish camps there are 200,000 Syrians take accommodations and moreover, there are more than officially registered 200,000 others who live in cities.
There are many Syrians who wait for being registered. The UN sources say, if the situation does not change, number of Syrians will top 1 million at the end of 2013.
Across the globe, 45 million people were displaced as this number was recorded the highest of all past 20 years. As this is the situation, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched on the 7th of June in Geneva the 5th version of the regional refugee response plan on Syrian refugees.
UNHCR expects that anticipate that there may be up to 3,5 million Syrian refugees by the end of 2013 in the whole region including Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey as the UN officials note that the situation in Syria seems only to worsen. Syrians are the fourth largest group after Afghan, Iraqi and Somalian refugees worldwide.
Currently, there are 1.7 million Syrian shelter seekers in the whole region and UNHCR says, this would be almost double of this number at the end of year as well as 6,5 million Syrians would be displaced within their own country which means 10 millions of people in other means half of the population of Syria.
- New package of aid over 3 billion dollars
That is why UNHCR had to renew their emergency aid packages and they requested for an unprecedented humanitarian aid package.
Carol Batchelor, Turkey representative of the UNHCR said they requested for an unprecedented humanitarian aid package because the number of Syrians were unprecedented. Batchelor stated, “the new package of aid would be over 3 billion dollars."
UNHCR started receiving initial responses for their aid call. "This was just launched on the 7th of June, so we are in the process of receiving feedback from states, from donors, from partners and so on," said Batchelor. UN officials say that they strongly appeal to the international community as they do not see any political solutions coming any time soon in Syria.
- States stuck to part of their commitments made in Kuwait donors conference
In January 2013, a conference was held in Kuwait to give support Syrians where $1.5 billion worth of aid was promised. However, it is known that an important part of this promise has not been fulfilled.
UNHCR official Batchelor said that at the Kuwait conference, several states have however stepped forward and added, "Kuwait has given substantial support, US increased its pledges. They have come forward with concrete donations. I think the most recent one being a very substantial package from the EU. We are very grateful for these. However, we would appeal to all states who made these commitments and pledges and to move them forward to implementation stage. I would recall that the amount of money that is needed to assist the Syrians to respond to this crisis is unprecedented. Actual numbers exceed the anticipated numbers so we do make a strong appeal to all parties, to states -traditional donors- private sector, everyone has something that they can contribute."
As the density of the violence inclines in Syria, among deaths, more Syrian citizens would need to flee their homes. Recently, news reports stated that 30 thousand people populated Qusayr town was emptied due to heavy attacks of the regime forces. Upon a question of what if a similar situation was taking place in the 3 million populated Aleppo city where is also close to the Turkish border, UNHCR Turkey representative Batchelor stated, "In terms of preparedness, this is something that we have discussed with surrounding countries in particular. We do have contingency plans within the UN system. We work very closely with the government of Turkey. We are working very closely with them to ensure that people can be received, they can be registered, identified, documented that their assistance needs can be met. In order to keep doing this, we need greater support from the international community. We need financial assistance, humanitarian aid and we need the international community also to have their borders open."
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