International donors pledge billions for war-ravaged Syria

International donors meeting in Kuwait pledged $2.4 billion in humanitarian aid for victims of the Syrian war, which the chief of the United Nations said Wednesday had left half the population in need of urgent help.

Millions of Syrians have been driven from their homes as a result of the crisis, now in its third year. Getting aid to many of those in need remains a challenge because they are trapped in communities besieged by the fighting.

Delegates from nearly 70 nations and 24 international organizations gathered on Wednesday for the one-day meeting, chaired by U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, on aid for the victims.

The meeting had gathered pledges of over $2.4 billion by late afternoon as the U.N. sought to raise an unprecedented $6.5 billion, the largest ever in the organization's history for a single humanitarian emergency. Of that total, $2.3 billion would support 9.3 million people inside Syria and $4.2 billion would be for Syrian refugees, expected to nearly double to 4.1 million by the end of 2014.

"Half of the total population of Syrian people, nearly 9.3 million individuals, urgently need humanitarian aid," Ban told participants, pointing out that more than three million people have fled.

The host country led the donations with a pledge for $500 million announced by the emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, at the opening of the conference.

The United States promised $380 million, but warned that international efforts to ease the suffering of Syrians will fail if President Bashar al-Assad refuses to let humanitarian assistance reach the people who need it.

Britain's former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is the U.N.'s envoy for education, said the schooling of Syria's children was as important as delivering food and medicine to refugees.

He told Al Jazeera about a U.N. plan to educate 400,000 Syrian children.

"There are children on the streets, there are children begging, in child labor, turning to violence," Brown said. "Unless we do something about this, we have got a huge social problem with dislocation in Lebanon and other areas where refugees are based."

In anticipation of the aid summit, rights and aid groups said this week that funds were urgently needed.

"The continuing violence in Syria has sparked one of the biggest humanitarian crises in recent history," Amnesty International said in a news release Tuesday. "The world's response to the Syria crisis so far has been woefully inadequate.”

Amnesty echoed U.S. calls for the Syrian government to lift blockades affecting the civilian population in opposition-held towns and areas.

As world leaders criticized Assad for restricting humanitarian access, allegations surfaced that many of the same countries have secretly engaged with his government on "security" issues pertaining to the rise of Islamist hard-liners among the Syrian opposition.

In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday night, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said Western intelligence officials had visited Syria to discuss security cooperation with the government. He told the news agency that the visits to Damascus pointed to a "schism" between what Western politicians were saying about Assad's government and what their security services were doing.

"I would not specify, but many of them have visited Damascus, yes," Mekdad said. "When these countries ask for security cooperation, then it seems to me there is a schism between the political and security leadership."

Western governments have backed the anti-Assad opposition but are increasingly concerned about the influence Al-Qaeda-linked groups are wielding in the civil war. In December, the U.S. and United Kingdom cut off military aid to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) after a rival Islamist faction looted an FSA barracks in Northern Syria.

Citing informed sources, the BBC said the U.S., British and German intelligence agencies were among those that had sent officials to Damascus to discuss not just foreign nationals detained in Syria, but also broader security matters.

Al Jazeera and wire services