Germany contributes aid to Syrian refugees in Jordan

The World Food Programme said Sunday it would provide e-vouchers with full value to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Jordan this month after a pledge by Germany to provide aid to the displaced people.

The UN agency said in a statement that the German government had offered at least $65 million to Jordan, part of the total contributions pledged at last month's "Supporting Syria and the Region conference", which took place in London.

Through this contribution, the statement said, the UN humanitarian organisation, along with other donors, will be able to continue providing assistance to some 530,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan by issuing those e-vouchers with full value as of March until the end of 2016.

WFP country director, Abdul Majid Yahia, said:"this extraordinary generosity is not a surprise for us. Since the Syrian refugees started to come to Jordan in 2012, the German government had until this day contributed $88 million, thus being one of the largest donor nations to the WFP regional process to respond to the Syrian crisis".

He stressed the last pledge would "consolidate the German government's ongoing commitment to ease the plight of the victims of the Syrian crisis and gives them hope for a better future".

The statement reminded that at the London conference, the amount of $675 million had been allocated to the WFP, with Germany pledging an unprecedented contribution of 570 million Euro to support the WFP operations to respond to the Syrian crisis as well as its operations to support the displaced people in Iraq.

Source: Petra