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Lebanon in particular is dealing with enormous challenges, as the four million Lebanese play host to one million registered refugees and an unknown number of unregistered ones.
“I can't even speak about the unregistered people,” Merkel said, adding that Germans could scarcely imagine what this wave of people meant for Lebanon.
A group of 50 non-government organizations involved in the refugee crisis called for a doubling of humanitarian aid and asked Western countries to take in at least another 180,000 people.
Their call fell on fertile ground in Germany, with Development Minister Gerd Müller saying that “what's going on is a once-in-a-century catastrophe.”
“The money is there” in European Union (EU) countries to help the refugees, Müller said – “we just have to set new priorities.”
Müller said that one billion Euros could quickly be made available from EU funds. Germany itself is to work with UN children's organization Unicef to build refugee camps in northern Iraq.
Unicef estimates that seven million children and young people have fled the civil war in Syria and Islamic terror group Isis.
Christian Schneider, director of Unicef in Germany, said that the world was in a “race against time” to prevent the winter taking a heavy toll on refugees.
“People will die,” Müller agreed, “unless they are immediately and decisively helped.”
Millions of people are currently living in temporary accommodation within Syria or in its closest neighbouring states, especially Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
Germany has taken in around 20,000 Syrian refugees.
SEE ALSO: 'Germany can handle more refugees'
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