BRUSSELS: The EU executive announced a new 23-million-euro aid package to help meet the needs of the Syrian population and refugees reeling from the country’s 15-month-old civil unrest.
The aid, from delivering education and health services to training NGOs and media activities, is intended to help people face the crisis in Syria itself as well as help refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
In Syria itself, $12.6 million will be made immediately available to assist people in coping with the unrest.
“Life for the population has become ever more difficult, with no obvious solution in sight,” a European Commission statement said.
“Basic commodities are expensive and access to fundamental services such as education and health is becoming increasingly challenging. Everyday life has become unpredictable and isolated, systemic acts of violence have spread almost over the entire Syrian territory.”
More than 70,000 Syrians have registered as refugees from the country and the EU’s humanitarian aid commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said over a million Syrians were vulnerable and many tens of thousands internally displaced.
EU aid would be channeled to NGOs with a good track record, she said. Because of the presence of 600,000 Iraqi and Palestinian refugees in Syria, there were many reliable and efficient NGOs at work there.
Speaking on a separate theme, Georgieva said that despite Europe’s festering economic crisis, its citizens increasingly favor humanitarian aid.
According to an EU survey, nine out of 10 people, or 88 percent, believed it was important for the EU to continue funding humanitarian aid — a nine percent rise in comparison to a similar survey in 2010.
