Britain and Norway pledged on Thursday to spend an additional $2.9 billion in aid for Syrians by 2020, seeking to build momentum for a donor conference that the United Nations hopes will raise more than $7 billion for this year alone.
With Syria's five-year-old civil war raging and U.N.-mediated peace talks in Geneva halted after just a few days amid acrimony between government and opposition negotiators, the one-day London conference will try to tackle dire humanitarian needs.
The war has killed an estimated 250,000 people and driven millions from their homes, with 6 million Syrians displaced within the country and more than 4 million others having left for Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and beyond.
U.N. agencies are appealing for $7.73 billion to cope with the disaster this year, with a further $1.2 billion needed to fund national response plans by countries in the region.