The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Tuesday called on countries to step forward and take in another 400,000 Syrian refugees.

On his first visit to Washington since being appointed to head the UN refugee efforts, Filippo Grandi said the world must do more to end the crisis.

"On 30 March, I'm going to chair a meeting in Geneva at which I ask the international community to take 10 percent of all the Syrian refugees," Grandi said.

"Ten percent is a lot of people. It’s more than 400,000 people," he told reporters, on the fifth anniversary of Syria’s bloody civil war, the UN official explained.

More than 4 million Syrians have fled their war-torn country since the conflict erupted, and more than 6 million are displaced within its borders.

Neighboring Jordan,Turkey and Lebanon are struggling to cope with the exodus and the onward flow has created a political and humanitarian crisis in Europe.

Source : Petra