ICRC: $82m budget shortfall due to Iraq, Syria

The International Committee of the Red Cross has announced a record budget shortfall due to the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts, said the UK's Guardian earlier today.

ICRC said that more refugees will try to make the journey to Europe if their needs are not met.

By late September the humanitarian organisation's funding gap for operations in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon had reached "the alarming figure" of 80m Swiss francs ($82m) for 2015, said Robert Mardini, ICRC's regional director for the Middle East reported the Guardian.

"Humanitarian response is a sticking plaster, but this sticking plaster is indispensable in Syria, Iraq and the neighbouring countries today. Normally at this time of the year our activities in major war zones are fully funded. This year they are not," Mardini said.

Humanitarian response is a sticking plaster, but this sticking plaster is indispensable in Syria, Iraq. - Robert Mardini, ICRC's regional director for the Middle East

Mardini hoped donors would fill the gap, and said the UK and other European governments had made "positive signals" to help.

"Paradoxically, 2015 is the year where we got the strongest support from some of our own donors – and yet we have the biggest deficit ever," Mardini said.

The ICRC's field budget has grown by nearly 60 percent in five years and it now needs $123 million every month to sustain operations.

The organisation has reserve funds of $308 million but this is kept in case a crisis breaks out.

Mardini described the dire situation in Syria especially in besieged towns such as Moaddamiyah in rural Damascus.

"We were shocked to see that people there had not had electricity for two years. People were eating grass, people were drinking water from the swamps. We were able to help them, but it's not a one-off. We need to be able to go back there," Mardini said.

Twelve million people in Syria need humanitarian aid. The ICRC provides food and health services, as well as clean water for 5 million. In providing services it also hopes to offer Syrians an alternative to having to make the dangerous journey to Europe.

"Ordinary Syrians, ordinary Iraqis have one wish: to be back in their country and to have a decent, normal life," he said.

"The best way to address this problem is to have it fixed in the countries of origin and this is a combination of political work that needs to be done, but also... this sticking plaster that is humanitarian aid."