The United Nations Security Council says continued violence, crime, political instability and increased levels of displaced people are weighing heavily on Iraq's humanitarian crisis.

Four years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi refugee crisis has become one of the world's most severe humanitarian issues.

At the start of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, President Bush declared to the Iraqi people that help was "on the way" in the form of food, medicine and other aid. Four years later, a major international relief organization is warning of a major humanitarian crisis in Iraq brought about by hunger and inadequate clean drinking water.

Jordan has appealed for international help to deal with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis it is hosting on its soil. Mukheimar Abu-Jamous, the secretary-general of Jordan's Interior Ministry, told an international conference in Amman today that the influx of some 750,000 Iraqis into Jordan costs $1 billion a year in basic services, and heightens security concerns in the kingdom.

In a mid-year report issued on July 17, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) warned that the rate at which Iraqis are being driven from their homes since the bombing of the Al-Askari Mosque in February 2006 has not subsided.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees -- or UNHCR -- estimates there are now 1.2 million Iraqi refugees in Syria, 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon, and 10,000 in Turkey. That does not include an estimated 1.9 million Iraqis who are internally displaced inside Iraq.

More than 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes, seeking refuge either inside the country or beyond its borders as the situation deteriorates, the United Nations refugee agency said, urging countries to do more to ease their plight.

Aid workers in the United States are preparing for what would be the largest Iraqi influx to the U.S. after the Bush administration's decision to accept the first group of Iraqi refugees.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) today called for $42 million to help Iraqi children, who the agency said have reached a critical point due to violence and displacement.

The International Committee of the Red Cross is appealing for nearly $30 million to substantially increase its humanitarian work in Iraq. The ICRC says it has spent almost all the money it had allocated for its assistance operations in Iraq this year. The additional funds requested will bring the organization's total budget for 2007 to about $75 million.

A leading human rights group has called on the United States and Britain to increase their assistance to Iraqis displaced by the conflict in their country. At the start of a conference on displaced Iraqi in Geneva on April 17, delegates from Human Rights Watch said the countries that led the 2003 invasion bear the greatest responsibility to help Iraqis displaced by the war.

An international conference opens today to address the refugee crisis caused by the several million Iraqis who have been forced to flee their homes due to violence since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.