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Updated at 4.50pm GMT
Cameron: Donor conference for Syria raises more than $10bn (£6.85bn)
Updated at 4.48pm GMT
Patrick Kingsley has been talking to the head of the International Organisation for Migration. He has hailed the generosity of the global community, but points out that aid is only part of the answer.
“We’re probably ahead of schedule in terms of the amounts, which is quite significant,” says William Lacy Swing. “The chances of reaching their goal are very good.”
But he also reminds politicians that aid alone is not enough: “It’s an important element in a complex formula, but clearly the most important thing is to stop the war. But in the meantime we have to save lives and to improve lives – and that’s by educating children and creating jobs.”
He also says that solving the Syrian crisis will not solve Europe’s migration crisis by itself – since Syrians only form half of the flow towards the continent.
“I cannot remember any time in my long career in which we’ve had so many simultaneous protracted complex crises – from the Horn of Africa to the Himalayas. There’s Boko Haram in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, unfinished revolutions in Libya and Yemen, and then the big one – Syria – all this at one time. The big one is getting Syria ended, but you still have to deal with a lot of other places where people whose lives are on hold.”
Lastly, Swing says the west cannot forego the policy of legal resettlement as part of its response – since the increased likelihood of formal resettlement tends to encourage people to stay put in transit countries for longer.
“The more resettlement countries you have, and the larger resettlement quotas there are, the likelier it is that people will say ‘hey, if I wait a while longer, then maybe i’ll get to go [to Europe through legal channels]. But that’s not the case at the moment because the refugee numbers are too high and the countries of resettlement are too few.”
Updated at 5.39pm GMT
Updated at 3.40pm GMT
READ MORE HERE:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/feb/04/syrians-donor-london-conference-aid
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union, Syria, The Muslim Times, UK

