[JURIST] UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) [official website] Antonio Guterres on Wednesday appealed [press release] for an increase in funding to help Syrian refugees. The new UNHCR report entitled Living in the Shadows [UNHCR report] highlights the condition of these refugees and shows many of them falling into deeper poverty. The UNHCR reported that two-thirds of Syrian refugees in Jordan are living below the poverty line and that one in six is living in extreme poverty. The statistics are based on a survey of more than 15,000 refugees. Guterres stated that the current funding is not enough to sustain refugees living in Jordan, Lebanon and other countries hosting them. Roughly half of the refugees do not have heating, 20 percent have no functioning laundry and about 25 percent have no electricity. On top of this the winter storm conditions in the region have destroyed many shelters and made these dire conditions much worse. About 3.8 million Syrians have registered with the UNHCR as refugees, and the number continues to grow. The UN launched an appeal for more than 8 billion dollars in assistance to help these conditions in 2015.

Last month the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the Islamic State (IS) [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] executed 1,878 people [JURIST report] in Syria over the past six months. In November The UN commission of inquiry for the Syrian Arab Republic reported that IS is responsible for war crimes [JURIST report] on a “massive scale” in Syria. In August the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that at least 191,000 people have been killed [JURIST report] in the Syrian conflict—almost double the number from last year’s report.