Qatar hosts major Syria donors’ meeting

Major donors for Syria must be more effective in showing “humanitarian support” to the Syrian people, the UN Secretary-General’s envoy for Humanitarian Affairs, Ahmed Al-Meraikhi, said today.

Speaking at the 10th meeting of the major donors group for Syria, which was hosted by Qatar today, Al-Meraikhi added that the Syrian crisis “has exceeded the geographical borders of Syria.”

He called on all the conflicting parties in Syria “to allow humanitarian actors to reach all those in need throughout Syria, and to remove obstacles to medical convoys and protect civilians and infrastructure.”

Read: US places long-range rocket launchers in Syria

The UN envoy praised the neighbouring donors’ on their continuous financial, economic and political support to the Syrian refugees, demanding all the concerned parties “make every effort to reach a political solution that would end the crisis and the grave human suffering.”

On his part, the Secretary-General of the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Al Hammadi, stressed on Doha’s keenness to support the Syrian people in light of what he described as “the inability of the international community to address the root causes of the seven-year crisis.”

This is not the first time for Qatar to host a meeting that aims to support the Syrian conflict. Last April, Doha hosted a regional meeting which included the United Nations and 25 national and regional non-governmental organisations and resulted in pledges of $262 million in support to the humanitarian issues in Syria.