Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said that the simple act of providing water to Syrian refugees living in Jordan is a daily miracle.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the 65th session of the Executive Committee of the High Commissioner's Programme, recently held in Geneva, Guterres said that in the host countries across the Middle East, people are financially struggling as a result of the refugee crisis, as rents and prices have gone up, salaries are under pressure and finding employment is increasingly difficult.

"Three and a half years into the crisis, there are over 3.2 million individually registered Syrian refugees, the world's largest refugee population after the Palestinians," he said, adding that the magnitude of this drama has profoundly impacted the neighboring countries that are so generously providing protection to those fleeing Syria.

He also noted that the refugee situation has taken on a dimension he would never have imagined, pointing that the hosting communities and public services are completely overstretched as the quarter of population in these countries are now Syrian.

As for Turkey, which has already spent 4 billion dollars of its budget on direct refugee assistance, the UN Commissioner said that it has recently witnessed its largest influx receiving over 160,000 Syrian Kurds in the Sanliurfa region over the last ten days.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said that the Security Council expressed their satisfaction with the fact that lifesaving aid had continued to reach millions in Syria during the month of August, but also acknowledged the inadequacy of that as funding was running low.

*Petra