Countries hosting hundreds of thousands of Iraqis uprooted by war met Thursday in Jordan to grapple with the social and economic burdens amid appeals for help from rights groups.
The one-day conference was attended by representatives from Jordan and Syria -- which alone host a total of around two million Iraqi refugees -- as well as Egypt.
Also attending the conference are "observers" from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), Turkey, Iran, Russia, Japan, the European Union, the United States and Britain.
"We hope that we will find ways, with our neighbours, to help the Iraqis and that our prayers will be heard," Mohammed al-Hajj al-Hmud, secretary general of the Iraqi foreign ministry, said as he headed into the meeting.
"The conference will discuss ways of helping these states cope with burdens caused by Iraqi refugees," Jordan's foreign ministry said.
The United Nations estimates that some four million of Iraq's 26 million people have fled the violence in the country, including those who left before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
The UNHCR calls this the biggest wave of displacement in the Middle East since 1948, when the creation of Israel caused hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to take flight.
It estimates that Syria hosts some 1.4 million Iraqis and Jordan about 750,000, including people who abandoned the country before 2003.
Officially Jordan shies away from calling Iraqis on its territory "refugees" and has commissioned a Swedish group to survey their numbers and identify their status.
Although many commentators agree the influx of migrants has triggered concerns about inflation, job losses and the expansion of ghettos in Jordan, others blame the economic challenges on other factors.
"It appears that the end of subsidised fuel from Iraq, high international oil prices, exports of the domestic food supply and rising costs of food ... have done far more to spur inflation in Jordan over the last two years," the University of Jordan Center for Strategic Studies said in a report published in early July.
The study said Jordan's inflation rate was 6.25 percent in 2006 compared with 1.6 percent in 2003, when Jordan depended on Iraq for all its oil needs, importing 5.5 million tonnes annually by road, half of it free and the rest at a preferential price.
Nevertheless Jordan and Syria need funds to cope with the Iraqis.
The UNHCR has urged the international community to "put its money where its mouth is" and earlier this month it doubled to 123 million dollars its annual appeal for funding to help boost medical care, shelter and other support for the Iraqi refugees.
The agency warned that Syria and Jordan's healthcare, education and housing are under severe strain due to the continued influx of Iraqis and has repeatedly urged the Iraqis to register with its offices in Amman and Damascus.
The UNHCR has already registered more than 150,000 Iraqis in the region, he said.
As the conference got underway, the global rights watchdog Amnesty International urged the international community to help Jordan and Syria cope with the influx of Iraqi refugees.
Their presence "threatens a humanitarian crisis that could engulf the region unless concerted international action is taken now," Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa programme director Malcolm Smart said in a statement.
London-based Amnesty estimates that, on top of the two million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria, there another two million people internally displaced within the war-torn country.
Blair blasts Britons over Iraq war