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United Nations refugee agency UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Tuesday said that it has been forced to reduce the number of people in Iraq and Syria it provides aid to in Syria during the winter due to a lack of funds.
“The whole humanitarian community is facing shortfalls. People are becoming numb”, Amin Awad, the head of the UNHCR’s Middle East and North Africa bureau said, lamenting that the agency has to make “tough choices”.
The agency also said that it was short $58 million for its efforts to provide aid for people displaced in Iraq and Syria for the winter. As a result, almost one million displaced people who are desperate for kerosene, warm clothes, blankets and other items needed to stay warm may have to suffer in the winter, it warned.
“I wish we could support everybody, and I wish that we could keep everybody warm”, Amin said, adding that “the world is not responding”. He also noted that 13.6 million people had been displaced from Iraq and Syria, including 3.3 million Syrian and 190,000 refugees.
Around 7.2 million Syrians are displaced within Syria, many of them being forced to move several times over.
Around 1.9 million Iraqis were displaced this year alone; a million of them were forced to move due to extremist group Islamic State’s sweeping run across Syria and Iraq.
“Many fled with nothing”, UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
With winter fast approaching, and temperatures dropping to as low as minus 16 degree Celsius in parts of Iraq and Syria, the UNHCR has invested $154 million in aid for the countries. Due to the shortfall in funding, it expects to reach only 240,000 people in Iraq and 620,000 people in Syria.
As a result, Fleming said, it has been forced to make “some very tough choices over who to prioritize”.
“The needs are massive but funding has not kept up apace with the new displacement”, she added.