“Nearly $13 billion is needed this year — about a third of that amount for Syria and its neighboring countries — to provide aid to 73 million people, the top United Nations humanitarian official said” on Wednesday, the U.N. News Centre reports. “That’s an extra $8.6 billion to raise by the end of the year,” Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and U.N. Emergency Coordinator Valerie Amos said during the launch of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) mid-year humanitarian overview (.pdf), according to the news service. Amos “stressed that millions of people around the world desperately need help feeding their families, treating malnourished children and getting safe drinking water and other essential supplies,” the news service writes. “More than $5 billion has been provided for humanitarian organizations in 24 countries so far this year, Ms. Amos said,” the U.N. News Centre reports (7/17). The Guardian reports, “Turkey contributed more than $1 billion (£66 million) in humanitarian aid last year, making it the fourth-largest government donor, highlighting the role of new countries in the aid landscape.” The nation, “which also received official development assistance, ranked behind only the U.S. ($3.8 billion), the E.U. ($1.9 billion), and the U.K. ($1.2 billion), according to the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2013, released by Development Initiatives (DI), a research group,” according to the newspaper (Tran, 7/17).