The United Nations aid agency announced on Tuesday that $8 billion is needed to help Syrians affected by their country’s conflict. Speaking at a two-day donor conference in Brussels, Mark Lowcock, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), said resources for work inside Syria and with refugees in neighboring countries were "desperately short." "Were looking for $3.5 billion for urgent humanitarian assistance inside Syria for 13 million people and then $5.6 billion to help those countries bordering Syria who are hosting refugees," Lowcock told AFP, saying around $1.2 billion had already been raised. Programs may have to be cut back if funds are not forthcoming, he warned. Donor countries, aid groups and UN agencies are meeting for the seventh international conference on Syrias future as the conflict, now in its eighth year, shows no sign of letting up. Ministers will gather to make financial commitments on Wednesday, with EU and UN officials hoping for to do better than the $6 billion pledged last year. In 2017 and 2016 UNOCHA managed to raise only half of the money it needed for work in Syria, with donor countries increasingly under pressure to help out in other crises rather than the protracted, bloody Syrian civil war. Lowcock called on regime leader Bashar al-Assad and his international allies, particularly Russia, to do more to help Syrians suffering the effects of the conflict. "The government of Syria obviously has a responsibility -- which they accept -- for their own people, and the more they can use their own resources for meeting basic needs rather than dropping bombs the better," Lowcock said. Some 6.1 people are now internally displaced, more than five million have fled Syria and 13 million including six million children are in need of aid, according to the UN. More than 700,000 people have been displaced since the start of this year alone. UN and EU officials held talks with aid groups working in Syria and neighboring countries on Tuesday to get their views before government ministers arrive on Wednesday. Save the Children International chief executive, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, urged donors to focus on education, saying a third of Syrian youngsters are out of school and a third of Syrian schools are unusable because of the war. "We have let Syrian children down. This is the seventh year and theyre still being let down," Thorning-Schmidt told AFP. UN childrens agency UNICEF said some 2.8 million Syrian children had missed out on education, warning that in parts of the country simply going to school "has at times become a matter of life and death". Regarding the situation in Syria’s Raqqa, the UN revealed that it was intentionally providing only barebones aid in the former ISIS stronghold to avoid attracting more civilians to the still highly dangerous city, an official said Tuesday. "We dont want to start too vigorous programs... because we dont want to make the impression that Raqqa city is safe," said Jakob Kern, head of the World Food Program’s operations in Syria. "Because it is not safe. Nobody should actually live there," he told journalists in Geneva. His comments came after the UN earlier this month conducted its first humanitarian mission to Raqqa since it was liberated from ISIS last October. He said on average two people are killed each day by stepping on mines or other unexploded devices. "You have a city that was completely destroyed... completely mined," he said, "and yet 100,000 people are living there." The WFP is for now providing food aid to some 50,000 people in Raqqa through local partners on the ground.