Syria By The Numbers
Syrians refugees try to enter a truck which will transport them back to their homeland at the Al-Zaatri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria. (REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed)
The figures are so large that we kind of lost sight of the fact that behind each one of those numbers ... is a child, is a woman, is a man, it's a family, it's a community.Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs
Antonio Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees calls Syria's Civil War "the most dangerous crisis for global peace and security since World War 2."
More than 126,000 people have died in the two-and-a-half years since the conflict began ... about the population of Saint John or New Brunswick or Thunder Bay, Ontario.
More than 2.3 million people have fled Syria since the fighting started. Another 1.8 million are expected to flee in the next year. Taken together, that's like everyone in British Columbia -- or nearly everyone in Toronto and Mississaugua -- picking up and moving to Washington or New York States.
The problem inside Syria is even bigger. 6.5 million Syrians -- nearly 30 per cent of the population -- are internally displaced ... meaning they have fled their homes but stayed in the country.
That would be like everyone in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba suddenly being uprooted and homeless.
Every month, another 120,000 Syrians flee to a neighbouring country.
Most of them land in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq.
Syrian refugees now make up 20 per cent of the population of Lebanon.
In Jordan, the Zaatari refugee camp now houses 100,000 people. If it were a city, it would be the fifth largest in Jordan.
39 per cent of school-aged children in Syria have dropped out in the last year.
The fighting and distress has driven up the cost of living. The cost of a price of bread has gone up 500 per cent in the last year-and-a-half. A single blanket now costs 93 per cent of the average Syrian's monthly income.
Half the country is in need of some kind of humanitarian assistance.
The UN World Food Programme is trying to get food to 130,000 people every month. That's about the population of Kelowna, British Columbia ... Sherbrooke, Quebec ... or Guelph, Ontario.
The challenge is made more difficult by the fact that Syria is divided into pockets controlled by several different armed factions, some of which seize the food outright or demand "taxes" from the convoys carrying it through their territory.
The United Nations is asking the world for 6.5-Billion-dollars for humanitarian relief for Syria for 2014.
Last year, the international community promised 4.4-Billion-dollars for 2013.
So far, Only 68 per cent of the money promised has actually been delivered.
Canada has paid its pledge in full. Our contribution for 2013 was 131-million-dollars.
Also, A U.N. panel probing war crimes in Syria reported Thursday that people around the country are systematically vanishing without a trace as part of a widespread campaign of terror against civilians.
The expert panel said it found "a consistent country-wide pattern" of Syrian security, armed forces and pro-government militia seizing people in mass arrests or house searches and at checkpoints and hospitals, then making them disappear -- and denying that they even exist. Most of the victims have been young men.