UN seeks more aid for Syria as refugees and displaced expected to triple

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OTTAWA – The United Nations is predicting three times as many Syrians will be forced to flee their country in the coming year, and is asking Canada and the world to donate more towards the escalating humanitarian catastrophe.

Muhannad Hadi, the UN World Food Program’s emergency co-ordinator in Syria, is in Ottawa to deliver that message to the Canadian government, and to update officials on a crisis he says has no end in sight.

Hadi says Canada has certainly played its part in contributing $48 million towards the crisis.

But he says the ranks of Syria’s one million refugees, currently in neighbouring countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, could reach three million by the end of the year.

As for the estimated 2.5 million Syrians currently displaced within the country’s borders, Hadi says the WFP is predicting that number to climb to six million.

He said if donors across the globe — Canada included — do not offer more financial assistance, Syrian refugees and internally displaced people will simply go hungry.

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