International donors, led by the European Union, pledged on Monday 5 billion euros for Syrian refugees, with Brussels insisting they should not be “forced to return” to their country, where war broke out in 2011.

At the annual meeting organized by the EU, chaired by its foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, Brussels promised to allocate 2.12 billion euros in the period 2024-2025.

This figure includes €560 million already pledged for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq this year, with equal funding expected next year.

Furthermore, the EU promised to allocate an amount of one billion euros for the Syrian refugees in Turkey.

“The situation in Syria is more serious today than it was a year ago. In fact, it has never been this serious and the humanitarian needs have never been this great,” said Josep Borrell.

“Today, 16.7 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance,” a number that is “at the highest level since the beginning of the crisis, 13 years ago,” he added.

The European Commissioner in charge of humanitarian affairs, Janes Lenarcic, said donors had pledged another 2.5 billion euros in loans, specifying that the EU and member states would provide around three-quarters of the allocations.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently warned that its operations to support displaced Syrians continue to face a problem of underfunding — just 15% of the established budget has been covered — for nearly six months.

Countries in the region that have received millions of refugees from Syria are increasingly pushing for their “voluntary” return to their country.

But Mr Borrell warned against any attempt to force refugees back to Syria. “Voluntary returns are voluntary returns. Refugees should not be forced to return to Syria,” he said. “We believe that there is no safe, voluntary, informed and dignified return for refugees in Syria at present,” he insisted.

The highly complex war in Syria, which broke out in 2011, triggered by the suppression of protests with a central demand for the country’s democratization, has claimed the lives of more than half a million people and turned millions of the country’s citizens into internally displaced persons and refugees.