EU strengthens its Syria crisis response through additional funding to UNICEF

The additional EU funding was signed today by EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn and UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. This latest contribution brings the total funding from the EU Trust Fund for UNICEF’s work on the Syria crisis response to nearly €200 million.

As families around the world prepare for the return to school, the European Union (EU) has renewed its commitment to get children affected by the war in Syria into education. This €90 million support is provided by the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis and will enable UNICEF to provide critical education and protection services to Syrian refugee and host community children in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, so that they can attend school and learn.

“I cannot stress enough the importance of promoting and providing access to quality education for children and young people in all countries affected by the Syrian crisis”, said Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations during the signing ceremony. “This is about creating hope, and doing what we can to ensure there is no ‘lost generation’. Thanks to our EU-UNICEF cooperation children in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are able to go to school and have access to safe spaces for non-formal education, protection and psycho-social care”.

With the conflict now in its seventh year, around 2 million children from Syria live as refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, adding pressure on already stretched host communities and their administrations.

In line with commitments made in donor conferences for Syria over the past six years, most recently the Brussels Conference in April 2017, the EU and UNICEF are investing in the future of Syria and the region: their children.

Background

Since its establishment in December 2014, an increasing share of the EU’s resilience support to help countries neighbouring Syria is provided through the EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian crisis.The Trust Fund reinforces the integrated EU aid response to the crisis. It primarily addresses longer term resilience and early recovery needs of Syrian refugees and overstretched host communities and their administrations in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. An important added value of the EU Trust Fund is its support for both refugee and host communities affected by this protracted crisis.

The current overall volume of the EU Trust Fund is €1.3 billion, with contributions from 22 Member States, the EU and Turkey. A total of €1 billion has been allocated to concrete assistance programmes for refugees and host communities in the region. These programmes support basic education and child protection, training and higher education, better access to healthcare, improved water and waste-water infrastructure, as well as support to resilience, economic opportunities and social inclusion.

For More Information

EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis

Factsheet: EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syrian Crisis