Iraq News

Syria crisis still 'appalling': aid chief Miliband

The head of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and former British foreign secretary David Miliband on Thursday (February 16th) said the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Syria was still "appalling" despite a fragile ceasefire, AFP reported.

"The fact that the war has gone to reduced intensity has led to much reduced popular media attention on what remains an appalling crisis inside Syria," Miliband said on the sidelines of the World Tourism Forum in Istanbul.

He said there are "seven million people displaced from their homes and continued low-level fighting that terrorises people and the humanitarian crisis outside the country".

Miliband, who has been running the IRC since 2013, said one of his priorities is "to make the case that the lesson of history is when the world forgets these humanitarian crises, they become political crises again".

"They are not just a humanitarian emergency, they become a political emergency," he added.

"And that is something that has caused terrible problems across not just the Middle East but across Europe in the course of the Syria crisis. It is something we really cannot afford."

With under-reported conflicts raging in areas including Yemen and South Sudan, Miliband said the world aid system was not only facing the Syria crisis but other emergencies that outstripped the capacity of the humanitarian system.

Humanitarian challenges are of a different nature, he noted, as refugees increasingly live in cities rather than camps and stay long-term in their host countries.

"Refugees are much less likely to be in camps these days," he said.

"Refugees are out of their own countries for much longer period of time, so you have to think about education, employment, not just survival when it comes to refugee policy," Miliband said.

"We also need to do aid differently. We need to put priority on employment and on education as well as on social policy. We need to address the needs of urban refugees" not just policies on camps, he said.

"We need to reform the system as well as expand it."

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