UN solicits more support for Turkey on Syrian refugees
The United Nations has urged the international community to step up support for Turkey in managing and hosting Syrian refugees.
Spokesman for the United Nations Refugee Agency, Babar Baloch, said this on Friday 28th, February, 2020 at a news briefing in Geneva.
“We have been appealing to neighboring countries including Turkey to broaden admission for people who are on the run inside Syria,” he said.
“But let us not forget that Turkey hosts some 3.6 million Syrian refugees so the call goes broader to the international community as well that support to Turkey must be sustained and stepped up,” he added.
Turkish officials said they would no longer try to stop irregular migrants form reaching Europe, as incessant bombings by the Syrian regime and its allies on the Idlib de-escalation zone has resulted in a fresh wave of migrants moving toward Turkey’s borders.
Baloch has however said they had not received an official notification.
“We have had no official communication from the Turkish government about any change as of now, so the cross border operation does continue,” he noted.
The de-escalation zone is currently home to about 4 million civilians, including hundreds of thousands displaced in recent years by regime forces throughout the war-torn country.
