Today, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield announced the United States is providing nearly $808 million in additional humanitarian assistance for the Syria crisis response at the sixth Brussels Conference on “Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region,” hosted by the European Union. This new funding includes nearly $446 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and is the largest USAID funding contribution for Syria this year.
The additional funding announced today will enable USAID partners to provide emergency food, nutrition, health, protection support, shelter, multipurpose cash, agriculture support for farmers, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) assistance, to include early recovery activities, for more than 5.8 million people in Syria and refugees in surrounding host countries. This latest USAID contribution will support the UN World Food Program in providing monthly food assistance to those in Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt. This funding also supports protection activities – including safe spaces for women and girls and psychosocial support – for conflict-affected communities, as well as water, sanitation, and hygiene assistance to Syrians in northwest Syria. With Syria’s health system decimated by 11 years of active conflict, today’s funding will help sustain health facilities across northern Syria, immunize high-risk children against preventable diseases, and provide preventative and curative nutrition services to pregnant and nursing women and children under five.
This newly announced assistance comes at a critical time, as more than 12 million Syrians do not have enough to eat, nearly 14 million have been displaced, basic services are destroyed, civilians continue to be killed by airstrikes and artillery, and some 14.6 million people require humanitarian aid — more than at any time since the start of the war.
These growing needs make the United Nations’ upcoming July reauthorization of the cross-border mandate – allowing aid to be delivered directly to people in northwest Syria – essential for the millions of Syrians who rely on this aid to survive. The United States is continuing to engage with United Nations Security Council members to maintain access through the UN-approved border crossing into Syria and pushing for additional access points for UN humanitarian assistance. It is imperative to keep humanitarian aid flowing for millions in one of the largest and most complex humanitarian crises.
The United States remains the single largest humanitarian donor to the Syria response and has provided nearly $15 billion in humanitarian assistance throughout Syria and the region since the start of the eleven-year conflict, including support for the COVID-19 pandemic response for Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. USAID assistance alone is reaching more than 5.5 million people per month inside Syria. The United States encourages other donors to support the Syrian people given the scale and urgency of needs.
