Saudi gives $139bn in humanitarian aid to 95 countries

SAUDI ARABIA has, during the past 40 years, given out more than $139 billion in humanitarian assistance to 95 countries, the Kingdom’s Ambassador to Egypt, Ahmed Abdulaziz Kattan, has said.

Qattan, who is the Kingdom’s permanent representative to the Arab League, said Saudi Arabia ranks first internationally in its official development assistance with a ratio of 1.9 percent of its GDP against the United Nations’ ratio of 0.07 percent.

“The Kingdom, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), occupies fourth place worldwide in humanitarian assistance to distraught countries of the world,” he said.

Kattan, who is the dean of the Arab ambassadors in Egypt, said the Kingdom had always been keen to extend humanitarian assistance to the refugees around the world in line with the tenets of Islam which propagates love, peace and fraternity among human beings.

“The Kingdom started its humanitarian assistance as early as 1950 when King Abdulaziz, the founder, granted $100,000 to the displaced in the flood-affected Punjab region though the country’s resources were extremely scant at the time”, he said.

He recalled that the Kingdom has a long history in dealing with the crises of the refugees and said that the country had spent more than $1 billion in the construction of camps in Rafah, in the north, for the Iraqi refugees who left their country when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Kattan praised the efforts of King Salman Center for Relief and Humanitarian Work which was established in May last year.

“Since its establishment the center has extended humanitarian assistance reaching more than $600 million to 19 war-torn countries,” he said.

The ambassador said the centre had also executed 52 humanitarian projects in the field of accommodation and food security which benefited more than 22 million people.

Kattan said the Kingdom has received more than 2.5 million Syrian nationals on its land giving them freedom of movement, work opportunities and free education and medication.

“We have not considered the Syrian brothers as refugees. There are now about 141,000 Syrian male and female students studying in the Kingdom,” he said.

He said the Kingdom has also provided humanitarian assistance of more than $800 million to the Syrian refugees in neighboring countries.

Kattan said the Kingdom considered the Yemeni refugees as visitors granting them facilities of residence, work, education and medication to more than 500,000 of them. He said there are more than 285,000 Yemeni of both genders are studying in government schools.

“The Kingdom has extended more than $500 million in foodstuffs and medicines to the Yemeni people and has also provided the Yemeni refugees in Djibouti and Somalia with assistance reaching more than 42 million,” he said.

The ambassador said in February 2016, the Kingdom has extended $59 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) bringing its total assistance to the agency since its establishment to more than $500 million.