Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, declared on Wednesday that the EU intends to convene a donor conference in March to solicit foreign funding for Syria and Turkey in response to the two significant earthquakes that occurred on Monday.
“We are currently working together to save lives in a race against time. Soon, we shall all work together to deliver aid. Syria and Turkey can rely on the EU “Twitter user von der Leyen posted.
In order to “mobilize funding from the international community in support for the people” of both nations, the EU said the summit would be place in Brussels at the beginning of next month in conjunction with Turkish authorities.
In a statement, von der Leyen stressed that “no one should be left alone when a catastrophe like this hits a people.”
The gathering, which “shall be open to EU Member States, neighboring nations, UN members, and international lenders,” is intended to coordinate the global response to the disaster.
After large magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes struck Turkiye on Monday near the Syrian border, the European Union moved quickly to send rescue teams there.
However, due to EU sanctions imposed on the Assad administration since 2011 in reaction to his ruthless crackdown on demonstrators that descended into a civil war, it first only provided Syria with the barest amount of aid through already-existing humanitarian initiatives.
According to the EU’s crisis management commissioner, Damascus filed an official request for assistance to the organization on Wednesday.
Now that Damascus has moved, Janez Lenarcic stated the commission is requesting European nations “to respond favorably to this request” through the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism, which organizes relief.
The 27 EU members and eight nearby non-EU countries, including Norway and Turkey, make up the participants in the EU mechanism.
Following the devastating earthquakes on Monday, the European Union dispatched 1,150 rescuers and 70 rescue dogs to Turkiye.
Following two powerful earthquakes that rattled the southern region of the country on Monday, at least 9,057 people were dead and 52,000 more were injured in 10 provinces of Turkiye.
The earthquakes also shook a number of the region’s bordering nations, including Lebanon and Syria.
Syria, which has already seen a ten-year civil war, has been particularly hard impacted, with over 2,500 people killed and thousands more injured.
