David Cameron calls for billions more in international aid for Syrian refugees

The international community must raise billions of dollars more than last year to alleviate the unacceptable plight of Syrian refugees, David Cameron has warned prior to a London donor conference designed to address the consequences of the five-year Syrian civil war.

At a conference attended by 70 world leaders, including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, and the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Cameron will on Thursday promise to double UK aid to Syria through to 2020. “Sufficient funding to guarantee the basics of life that these refugees need must be the bare minimum expected of us,” he writes in the Guardian, calling for “a new approach to humanitarian aid in the region”. Organisers want the aid to be diverted from food handouts towards work and education opportunities for Syrians in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

In a stark illustration of the intractability of the conflict, the United Nations special envoy to Syria on Wednesday put peace talks in Geneva on pause until later this month, saying he would not “talk for the sake of talking”.

“I have concluded frankly that after the first week of preparatory talks there is more work to be done, not only by us but by the stakeholders,” said Staffan de Mistura after the third day of talks. “I have indicated from the first day that I won’t talk for the sake of talking.”

Opposition forces fear the Assad regime, supported by Moscow’s bombing campaign, is gaining more strategic ground. Syrian state television and Lebanon’s Hezbollah TV reported on Wednesday that the Syrian army and allied militiamen had broken a long rebel siege of two Shia villages in northern Aleppo province – a breakthrough which, if true, would mark a major victory for government forces.

In the face of the ongoing turmoil, Cameron predicts that the pledging conference, the first to be held at head of state level, will raise billions more at the start of this year than the $4.5bn (£3.1bn) raised in the whole of last year.