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The United Nations' refugee agency on Tuesday called on Syria's neighbors to accept all the Syrians who were forced to flee the bloody conflict in their homeland.
"When a war sweeps up a nation, there can be nothing more important to its people than open borders," UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres said during his visit to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
"With the escalation of this conflict, Syria could be on the edge of an abyss. This war has resulted in a humanitarian calamity without parallel in recent history," Guterres was quoted as saying in a press release emailed to Xinhua.
The UNHCR chief and Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), jointly visited the Iraqi capital amid a growing exodus of Syrians into Iraq's northern Kurdish region.
About 46,000 Syrian refugees entered Iraq's Kurdish region in the recent influx after regional authorities decided to open the border for them on Aug. 15, raising the total number of Syrian refugees in Iraq to some 200,000, according to the UN refugee agency.
"Enough. Now is the time for the global community to come together to ensure the violence ends and the healing begins. The children of Syria are depending on us not just to meet their needs today but to provide hope for a better tomorrow," Cousin said.
The UNHCR and WFP chiefs met senior Iraqi officials, including Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Minister of Displacement and Migration Dindar Najman Shafeed.
The Iraqi officials expressed their concern about meeting the needs of rising numbers of refugees as well as security problems and worry that the conflict could spread.
While expressing appreciation for the generosity of international donors, Guterres and Cousin called on donors to recognize the funding needs to assist the growing number of Syrian refugees in Iraq, noting that as the conflict continues unabated, the costs of the humanitarian response are escalating and funding is short.
