Kuwait launches Syria relief campaign

Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah Monday appealed for donations to a nationwide fund-raising campaign to support the Syrian people facing a serious humanitarian crisis due the country’s civil war.

The emir issued “a distress call to citizens, men and women, old and young, to the residents of Kuwait, to charity organizations, civil society institutions and the private sector to participate in the national campaign for the relief of our Syrian brothers inside and outside the country,” a statement from the royal court sent Al Arabiya said.

He said the failure of the international community to end the suffering the Syrian people will be remembered as “stigma” for generations.

On Sunday night, several Kuwaiti charities announced a fund-raising campaign to raise $141 million (100 million euros) to build camps for Syrian refugees.

The appeal comes two days before a U.N.-sponsored donors conference in Kuwait City to raise an unprecedented $6.5 billion for Syrians amid U.N. reports of deteriorating humanitarian conditions inside the war-torn country.

At the first donors conference in January 2013, Kuwait promised and later paid $300 million out of total pledges of $1.5 billion.

The U.N. has described the Syria appeal as the largest ever in its history for a single humanitarian emergency.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos at a Geneva conference said on Monday that $6.5 billion will be needed for the Syrian relief operations.

The $6.5 billion includes $2.3 billion for the 9.3 million people in Syria, as well as $4.2 billion for 4.1 million Syrian refugees, according to the U.N. figures.

The rebel news network SANA said on Monday that Syrian regime forces have blocked humanitarian aid to the Yarmuk refugee camp in Damascus.