The UK, Germany, Kuwait, Norway and the United Nations will co-host the Syria Donors Conference 2016 in London on 4 February. The event will bring together leaders from around the globe to raise funding critical to helping the millions of people who have been impacted by the devastating crisis in Syria.
Billions of dollars in international aid are needed to support those caught up in the conflict; however, current funding has not yet reached last year’s levels. UNFPA is seeking $107.1 million to continue supporting the estimated 5 million women and girls from Syria affected by this humanitarian crisis.
Around 13.5 million people are currently in need of aid inside Syria, and 4 million of them are women and girls of childbearing age. Of the 1.6 million internally displaced women and girls, an estimated 360,000 are pregnant. In addition, 1.1 million women and girls are in hard-to-reach places, with 100,000 trapped in 15 besieged locations, where access to reproductive health care and violence prevention measures is scarce or nonexistent.
Of the 4.7 million people from Syria who have taken refuge in neighbouring countries, particularly Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey, 1.2 million are women and girls of childbearing age. In addition, a recent UN joint report on the protection of refugees in Europe found grave risks to refugee and migrant women and girls on the move in Europe.
UNFPA is working to reduce maternal death and illnesses and to prevent gender-based violence inside Syria and other countries affected by the crisis. It has set up mobile clinics and primary health centres and hospitals that deliver a full range of reproductive health care services, and it has established safe spaces that provide lifesaving reproductive health and gender-based violence services, including clinical management of rape, so that women can heal after the violence. Learn more about how UNFPA is responding to the crisis here.
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