The United Nations is seeking $6.5 billion for 16 million people that have been affected by the conflict in Syria, according to Reuters Monday.
The UN's total appeal for 2014, estimated at $12.9 billion for 52 million people in 17 countries, has allocated more than half of its annual budget appeal to the Syrian case.
“This is the largest amount we have ever had to request at the start of the year,” UN Relief Emergency Coordinator Valerie Amos told reporters.
Amos added that the Syrian appeal was also the largest funding request for a single crisis that the UN has ever made.
In addition for operations inside Syria, the UN is seeking $4.2 billion to assist 4.1 million Syrian refugees in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
According to the appeal document for Syria, “The increasing number of internally displaced people and refugees is generating greater needs across all sectors and straining the capacities of neighboring countries, with profound regional consequences.”
In 2013, the UN appealed for $1.4 billion for aid assistance inside Syria, but only 62 percent of the requested funding has been received, according to UN figures.
The UN funding will be used "to provide food clean drinking water, shelter, education, health services and polio vaccines to Syrians" who are living as well as outside the war-torn country.
The UN sent its first humanitarian aid airlift to Syria's Kurdish northeast region Sunday, and is planning to send another set of supplies within the next 12 days according to the report.
