U.N. Refugee Official Calls Situation in Syria and Iraq ‘Unsustainable’
The war that has engulfed Syria and spread into Iraq has displaced 14 million people, including four million Syrian refugees scattered to neighboring countries, and it has created “host fatigue,” which has further aggravated the crisis, United Nations officials said Friday. In remarks to the United Nations Security Council, the officials also rebuked its 15 members […]Rick Gladstone reports for the New York Times:
The war that has engulfed Syria and spread into Iraq has displaced 14 million people, including four million Syrian refugees scattered to neighboring countries, and it has created “host fatigue,” which has further aggravated the crisis, United Nations officials said Friday. In remarks to the United Nations Security Council, the officials also rebuked its 15 members for what they called a failure to exert authority to intervene in the four-year-old Syria war, which has left 220,000 people dead.
The officials described the Iraqi territorial gains of the Islamic State, the Syria-based extremist group, as an unforeseen shock to an already overstretched emergency aid system. They called the crisis in both countries a contributor to the surge of people risking death at sea to reach Europe.
