(REUTERS) The number of Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries has passed 4 million, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Thursday (July 9).
UNHCR said that the total was on course to reach 4.27 million by the end of 2015.
Some 630,000 Syrians are now living in Jordan, according to the UNHCR figures.
But having escaped their war-torn homes, many of the refugees have found their new lives a struggle.
According to the UNHCR statement 86 percent live below the poverty line of $3.2 per day.
Refugee Abu Nour lives in a makeshift camp in Madaba — 30km (18 miles) southwest of Jordan’s capital Amman.
He said he wasn’t suprised that the number of refugees was rising, but but warned that some might be tempted to return home unless more help was made available to them.
“If the situation stays as it is, definitely the number of refugees will increase because as you see there are many different groups in Syria and many people want to run away. If they do not provide people with safe locations like Deraa area, people might go back. Many refugees are bored and want to go back,” Nour said, refering to an area 100km south of Damascus, near the Jordanian border.
Another refugee Abu Ali said his countrymen had no easy choices.
“Definitely the number will increase. The situation for Syrians is like a double-edged sword. If they go back, they will die because of the shelling and the problems. If they stay here, it is a big problem because of the lack of supplies. What am I to say. I don’t know what to say anymore.”
Most refugees from Syria’s four years of war are in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Turkey, which has more refugees than any other country, with 1.8 million Syrians.
A further 270,000 Syrians have asked for asylum in Europe and 7.6 million more are displaced within Syria.
UNHCR’s Jordan representative, Andrew Harper, said the international community needed to do more.
“Refugees are fleeing the biggest humanitarian tragedy that we are seeing in our lifetime and we need to make sure that they are not forgotten,” he said.
“So one of the reasons why we commemorating this 4 million mark is to put the attention back on the Syrian refugees and say look there is millions of people outside of Syria who need help and even millions more who are inside Syria need assistance and the international community is not doing enough.”
UNHCR’s appeal for $5.5 billion to support the Syrian refugees in 2015 is only 24 percent funded. The U.N. World Food Programme has already cut rations for refugees because of a lack of cash.
About 86 percent of the 630,000 in Jordan live below the poverty line of $3.2 per day, the UNHCR statement said, while more than half of the 1.173 million Syrians in Lebanon live in sub-standard shelters.
