SEOUL, April 1 (Yonhap) — South Korea has decided to donate US$10 million to help millions of Syrians displaced by a prolonged civil war, Seoul’s foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Seoul’s pledge came at a donors’ conference held on Monday in Kuwait aimed at supporting the international community’s efforts to resolve the humanitarian crisis in Syria.

The move will raise the total amount of assistance from Seoul to Syria to $23.45 million, the ministry said. In 2012, South Korea first provided assistance to Syrians worth $2 million.

More than 12 million Syrians need humanitarian assistance inside the war-torn country, up from 1 million people at the beginning of the conflict in 2011, according to the United Nations.

At the conference, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon requested that the world provide an unprecedented amount of $8.4 billion this year to tackle the growing number of Syrian refugees, according to the foreign ministry.

“As a new aid donor, South Korea has been actively engaged in coping with humanitarian crises and it will make efforts to expand such assistance in a way to commensurate with the country’s global status,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Participating countries at the donor conference have pledged to provide an accumulative $3.8 billion, including $570 million from the United States.

South Korea is the first country in the world that has transformed into an aid donor from a recipient nation.