Shia paramilitary fighters gesture in Tikrit yesterday.

AFP/Kuwait City

International donors pledged $3.8bn yesterday to help alleviate war-torn Syria’s humanitarian crisis, which Kuwait’s emir warned was the worst in “modern history”.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon told participants at the meeting in Kuwait that four out of five people in Syria were living in “poverty, misery and deprivation”.
“The Syrian people are victims of the worst humanitarian crisis of our time,” he said.  
Addressing the closing session of the Third International Pledging Conference for Syria, Ban welcomed the promised funds as “very generous”.
The amount almost equals the combined total of $3.9bn promised at the two previous conferences.
The EU pledged nearly 1.1bn euros ($1.2bn), double the amount the bloc offered last year, while Kuwait opened the conference with a promise of $500mn.
The United States pledged $507mn and non-governmental organisations committed more than $500mn.
Other major contributions came from Britain with $150mn, United Arab Emirates with $100mn and Norway which promised $93mn.
Jordan and Lebanon, which together host close to 2.5mn refugees, were represented by their premiers who appealed for international aid to help their economies cope with the tragedy.
Qatar’s Foreign Minister HE Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah proposed to set up a special fund for the education of Syrian children.
In Brussels, EU aid commissioner Christos Stylianides said in a statement that “the needs are overwhelming, and an extraordinary effort is needed by the wider donor community to mobilise significant funding”.
The money pledged by the bloc consists of 500mn euros in “humanitarian aid, early recovery and longer-term stabilisation assistance” from the European Commission, with the balance coming in pledges from the bloc’s 28 countries, the EU said.
“Four out of five Syrians live in poverty, misery and deprivation. The country has lost nearly four decades of human development,” Ban said.
Kuwait has hosted a donor conference for Syrians in each of the past two years, generating several billion dollars’ worth of pledges.
Yesterday’s conference, attended by representatives from nearly 80 countries, was preceded by a meeting of charitable organisations, which pledged a total of $506mn.
“Failing to meet the required funds risks resulting in a horrifying and dangerous humanitarian catastrophe,” Abdullah al-Maatuq, UN special envoy for humanitarian affairs, said as he opened that meeting.
The UN has complained that not all previous pledges for aid had translated into funding.
Ban said in a report last week that the war had forced around 7.6mn people to leave their homes in Syria, while another 3.9mn have sought refuge in neighbouring countries.
“Every day brings more death, displacement and destruction,” the report said.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned of an “unsustainable” situation.
“After four years of conflict, we are at a tipping point. It is clear that the world’s response to the crisis in Syria cannot be business as usual. The situation is becoming unsustainable,” he said.  
Almost half of all Syrians have been forced to flee their homes, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.
The United Nations has launched an appeal for $8.4bn in 2015 to fund its humanitarian operations in Syria, with $5.5bn intended for Syrian refugees and $2.9bn for people inside the war-ravaged country.
On Monday, international aid agency Oxfam criticised the international response to the Syrian crisis, saying money pledged was woefully inadequate.
Last year was the deadliest yet in the conflict, with at least 76,000 people killed out of a total of more than 215,000 since it began in March 2011 with peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations.