Calls to include Palestinians of Syria in donor conference

Prime Minister Tammam Salam expressed on Friday his “satisfaction” with the results of the donors conference on Syria, revealing however that he has not yet been informed of Lebanon’s share of the donations for Syrian refugees, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (100.5). The pledge brings the USA aid to Syria total to $5.1 billion since 2011, making the US the largest provider of humanitarian aid to the Syrians during the period.

PRC stressed the importance of treating refugees in accordance with worldwide law, and the need to secure their living conditions and humanitarian needs so as to ensure they have a decent life until they return to their homes in Palestine.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed the aid conference as “a great success”. He said the United States is providing an additional $601 million in assistance to the Syrian people, plus $290 million in development aid specifically for education to refugee children in Jordan and Lebanon.

Thursday’s meeting opened hours after the latest U.N.-led bid to start peace talks in Geneva was suspended for three weeks – a sign of major difficulties.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu addresses a press conference at the QEII centre in central London on Thursday, towards the end of a donors” conference entitled “Supporting Syria & The Region’.

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

The participants at this year’s conference were determined not to repeat that failure.

Werner Hoyer, president of the European Investment Bank and a former deputy foreign minister of Germany, said that the migration surge a year ago was “a huge, loud, wake-up call for the people in Europe and beyond Europe”. Providing aid now, he said, “is much more economic than to wait until everybody has reached Amsterdam or Copenhagen and needs health care and schooling there”.

“We will be having many more donors conference in the future without any solution”.

“We should not have talks only for the sake of talks”, he said.

Non-governmental aid organizations like the International Rescue Committee have also played a key role in Syria.

He said that “60,000 to 70,000 people in the camps in north Aleppo are moving towards Turkey”. “Bombing civilians is a standard practice of warfare in Syria today, but that does not make it acceptable”. Other money, he said, would help enroll children in school, give refugees gainful employment and eventually rebuild devastated infrastructure.

Organizers believe finding jobs and schools for refugees in the Middle East can help increase regional stability and keep displaced Syrians from fleeing to Europe.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who is the youngest person ever to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, attended the conference with a Syrian teenager to call attention to the plight of refugees whose schooling has been disrupted.