Press Statement

Hadi al Bahra

President of the Syrian Coalition

December 15, 2014

We welcome today’s announcement by the European Commission and Italy to launch the European Union Regional Trust Fund, a platform allowing EU member states to jointly collect funds in response to the humanitarian fallout of the conflict in Syria.

More than 12 million people were forced to leave their homes in Syria since the start of the uprising in 2011. Nearly 8 million are internally displaced, and around 3.2 million live as refugees in neighboring countries. The newly founded trust fund, which will initially focus on providing support to countries in the region hosting Syrian refugees, including Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, will be of vital importance, not only to help meet the spiraling needs of those vulnerable refugees but also to deflect pressure on hosting governments and communities.