“As fighting continues in Syria’s civil war, the United Nations has said that it will be forced to cut already reduced food rations to hundreds of thousands of refugees unless a huge cash injection is found,” Al Jazeera reports. “About four million Syrians rely on international assistance to cope with fallout from the 22-month old conflict in which the U.N. estimates more than 60,000 people have died,” the news service writes (1/28). Speaking ahead of a humanitarian pledging conference that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will chair in Kuwait on Wednesday, John Ging, director of operations for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), “cited a funding shortfall that is affecting the ability of the U.N. and its partners to deliver vital assistance, including food, water and medical supplies,” the U.N. News Centre writes (1/28).

Ban “will seek more than $1.5 billion in new cash pledges” at the donor’s conference, according to Al Jazeera. “About $500 million is needed for operations in Syria and the rest for more than 650,000 refugees in countries around Syria,” the news service notes (1/28). In his remarks at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, Ban “call[ed] for global solidarity to end the violence in both [Syria and Mali] and aid to those that need it,” Devex notes (Villarino, 1/28).