African group attends pilgrim program

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The group included 250 pilgrims from 18 African countries. (SPA)
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Updated 30 January 2025
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African group attends pilgrim program

MAKKAH: The Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Dawah and Guidance on Wednesday held an open day for the third group of participants in the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Program for Hajj, Umrah and Visitation.

The group included 250 pilgrims from 18 African countries.

The open day involved a range of cultural and recreational competitions.

Attendees expressed their gratitude and appreciation to King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for their hospitality, asking God to reward them for their services to Islam and Muslims.

They also praised the efforts of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Dawah and Guidance, and said that the program followed the highest standards.

The program enables visitors to perform Umrah and visit religious, cultural and civilizational monuments in Makkah and Madinah.

Its executive director, Ali bin Abdullah Al-Zughaibi, welcomed the visitors, and said that the program is part of the leadership’s keenness on communicating with Muslims and spreading the spirit of Islamic brotherhood.


Kingdom and Gates Foundation forge ‘strong and growing partnership’

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Kingdom and Gates Foundation forge ‘strong and growing partnership’

  • Foundation is preparing to open a regional office in Riyadh to help strengthen the collaboration
  • Organization says it is working with Saudi authorities to protect children from polio and alleviate poverty

RIYADH: The Gates Foundation is working with Saudi Arabia to help protect 370 million children from polio each year and lift millions out of poverty in 33 Islamic Development Bank-member countries, a leading official from the foundation said on Tuesday.

The organization is also preparing to open a regional office in Riyadh, at Mohammed bin Salman Nonprofit City, to enhance its collaborations with authorities in the Kingdom.

“We have had a very strong and growing partnership with Saudi Arabia for some time. We work together on a variety of issues,” Dr. Chris Elias, the foundation’s president of global development, told Arab News at the 4th Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum.

During a special meeting of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh last year, Saudi aid agency KSrelief and the foundation announced a joint initiative to eradicate polio, improve global health and alleviate poverty.

“As we saw at the signing ceremony in the opening session of the RIHF on Monday … Saudi Arabia signed these agreements with the World Health Organization and UNICEF for $500 million over the next five years for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative,” Elias said. The funding provided by these agreements will be allocated to UN agencies that help implement the initiative.

“We also fund WHO and UNICEF,” he added. “So our partnership is that we together give money to the key organizations that are fighting to eradicate polio.

“I currently chair the board of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which is implemented by WHO and UNICEF, and we have made tremendous progress on eradicating polio from the world.

“We are down to two countries; for the last eight years, the only countries with endemic polio have been Pakistan and Afghanistan. So the majority of our effort at present is to finish the job on the eradication of polio in those two countries.”

Speaking about the Kingdom’s contributions to these efforts, he said: “Saudi Arabia made a very large pledge and, as a consequence, we added a representative from the Kingdom to the governing board of what’s called the Polio Oversight Board for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, that actually reaches about 370 million children a year with immunization.

“The second major component of our collaboration has been with the Islamic Development Bank on the Lives and Livelihoods Fund, that began five or six years ago. After a very successful first phase, we announced the Lives and Livelihoods’ second phase last year, to which Saudi Arabia pledged $100 million.

“And our pledge was up to $100 million, to a limit of 20 percent of the funds, because we have other funders coming in: the government of the UAE, the government of Qatar, as well as support from the Islamic Development Bank itself through the Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development.”

Elias also pointed out that the Gates Foundation, a charitable organization established 25 years ago by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his former wife, Melinda, has been working to support UNICEF’s humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza.

As for the opening of a regional office in Riyadh, he said: “We are in the process, following through on the registration.”

During the Misk Global Forum in Riyadh last November, the Gates Foundation and the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation, also known as Misk, announced Challenge for Change, a program that aims to provide support for nonprofit organizations and social enterprises across Saudi Arabia.

This assistance includes seed funding for researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and nonprofits that have the potential to make a social impact in the Middle East and North Africa, Elias explained.

In Afghanistan, “which has one of the most significant humanitarian situations in the world,” he said that the foundation is working with the Kingdom, the governments of the UAE and Qatar, and the Islamic Development Bank to help strengthen the healthcare system in the country.

“We also work with the Kingdom on disease outbreaks,” Elias added. “We have a partnership, together with the WHO, for the Global Health Emergency Corps that sets out actions to save lives during health emergencies. It involves many countries but Saudi Arabia is serving as a pilot country for that emergency core.”

It is very important to get disease outbreaks under control quickly, he said, and this is something that is particularly relevant in Saudi Arabia, a country that welcomes so many visitors from around the world every year for Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages.

“The Kingdom takes the protection of the holy sites and the protection of pilgrims who come to the holy cities, Makkah and Madinah, very seriously,” Elias noted.

Regarding the recent decision by President Donald Trump to withdraw the US from the WHO, Elias said: “WHO provides important guidance for countries around the world in public health. Gates Foundation is a major supporter of the WHO. The work of the WHO is going to remain extremely important and we will continue to work with them on these critical health issues.

“Our partnership will remain strong with them. I don’t see us being able to step in to replace funding from the US, or anybody else, but we will continue to partner with the WHO on the most important health issues, polio eradication being one of them.”

KSrelief, the Saudi aid agency, this year celebrates its 10th anniversary and Elias said: “We have worked with KSrelief for many of these projects, on the Polio Legacy Challenge and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

“I was very impressed at the forum’s opening ceremony to see they had a wonderful video that documented their 10-year history of humanitarian assistance.

“We have been working with them very intensely for, probably, the last five years. I think it’s really impressive what KSrelief has achieved in the first 10 years. We look forward to working with them for the next 10 years.”


How the UNFPA is working with Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief to protect women in Gaza

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How the UNFPA is working with Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief to protect women in Gaza

  • “This is the first KSrelief (Forum) I have been to over the four and it’s been an excellent experience to see how the work of KSrelief has grown the engagement and how it’s actually bringing partners together,” he told Arab News

RIYADH: The UN Population Fund is working with Saudi Arabia’s KSrelief to provide reproductive, maternal and protective services to women and girls in countries facing humanitarian crises in the region, such as Palestine, Yemen and Somalia.

“Whenever we are in a humanitarian situation, women and girls are always actually the first to suffer and they suffer the most in so many ways,” Andrew Paul Saberton, deputy executive director of the fund, told Arab News on the sidelines of the 4th Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum on Tuesday.

The UNFPA’s projects with the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center are providing maternal and reproductive services as well as protection for women and young girls subjected to gender-based and sexual violence.

The UNFPA’s mandate is to provide these services in both humanitarian crises and more than 150 developing countries around the world.

Saberton noted that displacement, people on the move, economic conditions, and cramped living conditions contributed to violence against women and girls. (AN photo by Jafar Al-Saleh)

Regionally, the UNFPA has numerous programs in place, including “delivering safe births in Gaza where there are mobile teams, and providing reproductive health services for 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza.”

When asked if the 50,000 figure from Gaza is on an annual or monthly basis, Saberton said that “at any moment in time there are 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza and the number is between 4,000-5,000 childbirths a month.

“In Yemen we are providing protection services, making sure there are protection services as well as maternal health services.

“In Sudan, we are working with displaced populations and providing maternal health services,” he said.

Saberton added that services are provided both in the form of health clinics and mobile teams, “to make sure that we make childbirth as safe as possible.”

The mobile clinics are providing health services to women and girls in humanitarian situations that are displaced and may not have access to physical health facilities if any are even available.

“Nobody should die in childbirth anywhere in the world,” Saberton said.

“Within any crisis, I am afraid the situation always gets worse for women and girls. For example, with maternal health and reproductive health. If you look at the world figures there are about 800 maternal deaths every day … 60 percent of maternal deaths occur in countries subject to fragile contexts or humanitarian contexts so the risk goes up,” he said.

“This is the reality of the situation.”

“It’s important to realize the humanitarian situation seems to be getting worse every day around the world.”

“Nearly half the countries that we work in — and we work in 150 countries and territories — nearly half, or 60 plus, are in a some form of humanitarian context and often those humanitarian crises are multifaceted; it could be conflict, climate change-related or economic instability.”

The causes of displacement, people on the move, the economic situation and cramped living conditions are some of the issues Saberton highlighted that increase violence against women and girls in humanitarian crises.

Saberton said that this is one of the reasons why the UNFPA has protection services on the ground.

“We are providing both safety and also providing well-being, and social support, but also medical facilities for any harm to women and girls.”

UNFPA is providing 1,600 human safe spaces where women have psychological support provided to them, and can access any health resources and facilities they might need.

Saberton was one of the forum’s speakers, and he said the event was “an excellent opportunity to talk, meet, and share ideas and knowledge with other humanitarian actors.

“This is the first KSrelief (Forum) I have been to over the four and it’s been an excellent experience to see how the work of KSrelief has grown the engagement and how it’s actually bringing partners together,” he told Arab News.

“Our partnership with KSrelief has grown over the years and has been a very important partner to us in the regional countries and we hope that will continue going forward.”

 


First Saudi traveling art exhibition makes a stop in Riyadh

Updated 25 February 2025
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First Saudi traveling art exhibition makes a stop in Riyadh

  • Filwa Nazer told Arab News: “The focus was to document and research Jeddah modernist architecture between the late 30s and early 60s
  • Inspired by an old handwritten remedy book passed down to her by her mother, it transforms layered silkscreen prints and charcoal drawings on suspended mesh

RIYADH: A Saudi traveling exhibition, titled “Art of the Kingdom: Poetic Illuminations,” opened on Monday in Riyadh at the Saudi Arabian Museum of Contemporary Art following its inauguration in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil last year.

Nestled in the capital’s Jax art district, the show brings together works by 17 prominent Saudi contemporary artists from different generations, regions, and artistic practices that demonstrate the country’s burgeoning art scene.

Basmah Felemban's "Brink of the Sea" (2025). (Supplied)

Mona Khazindar, adviser to the Ministry of Culture, said: “The Museums Commission is proud to present ‘Art of the Kingdom’ at SAMoCA at Jax, an exhibition showcasing Saudi Arabia’s dynamic artistic landscape, where tradition meets innovation.

“We are thrilled to celebrate Saudi creative practices in this way and invite audiences, both locally and internationally, to explore our history and culture through contemporary art.”

Daniah AlSaleh's "Hinat" (2022). (Supplied)

From paintings to installations and video works, the exhibition showcases the diversity and ambition of contemporary Saudi artists under two themes: the desert and cultural traditions.

Fatma Abdulhadi’s “It Will Heal” explores the evolving dialogue between humans and nature, where traditional practices become ongoing processes.

Fatma Abdulhadi’s "It Will Heal" (2025). (AN photo)

Inspired by an old handwritten remedy book passed down to her by her mother, it transforms layered silkscreen prints and charcoal drawings on suspended mesh. Just as plants communicate and adapt, the phrase “it will heal you, inshallah” reflects a belief in continuous connection and renewal.

“It’s a dialogue between humans and nature and everything in between, the recipe that humans do to feel safe, to feel healthy, to feel better,” Abdulhadi said.

Filwa Nazer’s “The Hands Want to See, The Eyes Want to Caress” (2021). (Supplied)

The sheets feature prints of the plants mentioned in the book as well as recipes in Arabic. The recipes are meant to help heal both physical and emotional troubles. One of the recipes for happiness recommends drinking camel milk with a drop of amber.

Moath Alofi has two works on display: “People of Pangea” and “The Last Tashahhud.” The former is a series of photos that provide an unconventional view of various locations in Saudi, while the latter is an ongoing photo series that captures small and modest mosques on the deserted roads leading to Madinah.

“These prayer rooms aren’t the usual ones, and this is what makes them really stand out. The raw architecture, the invention that the locals, tribals, Bedouins, or even philanthropists sometimes are trying to achieve by providing travelers a place for rest and worship and prayers—it’s interesting to see the material used, the architecture.
“I think international audiences will be surprised to see something that’s not usually shown,” Alofi told Arab News.

The work is shown in contrast with the anthropological sites captured in “People of Pangea” on the opposing wall of the exhibition.

“It’s not only about the locals or the people who built the mosques but also the ancient humans that actually lived on the land of Saudi Arabia 7,000 years ago. There has always been something happening in this Kingdom.

“You can see that Saudi artists are top notch — they’re up to the challenge, and I’m honored to be part of this as well,” Alofi said about local artists making it to international frontiers.

Filwa Nazer’s “The Hands Want to See, The Eyes Want to Caress” series incorporates sewing and embroidery on mixed media. The four pieces on display, each in dialogue with the other, explore the interplay of fragility and strength.

She told Arab News: “The focus was to document and research Jeddah modernist architecture between the late 30s and early 60s. My works were inspired by one house called Beit Ba Junaid — the owner of the house and its history and how it changed and evolved, and later on deteriorated over time and abandoned.

“I love being part of these exhibitions, organized by (the Ministry of Culture) and such, because I feel they are quite accessible to everyone, first of all. Second, they’re a place to connect with Saudi youth, and I want to have that communication with them, so I’m proud to be part of it and with my peers who are all great artists and friends.”

Other featured artists include Muhannad Shono, Lina Gazzaz, Manal Al-Dowayan, Ayman Zedani, Ahmed Mater, Ahaad Al-Amoudi, Shadia Alem, Faisal Samra, Ayman Yossri Daydban, Daniah Al-Saleh, Sarah Brahim, Ahmad Angawi, Nasser Al-Salem, and Basmah Felemban.

 

 


UN official calls for ‘scaling up and speeding up’ aid in humanitarian disasters

Updated 25 February 2025
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UN official calls for ‘scaling up and speeding up’ aid in humanitarian disasters

  • Jorge Moreira da Silva: ‘In this critical moment, we need not only to scale up, we need to speed up and to provide the aid in a more efficient and fast manner’
  • Jorge Moreira da Silva: ‘I was impressed to see the convening capacity of KSRelief to mobilize so many people around the world to discuss humanitarian aid (at) this critical juncture’

RIYADH: According to the World Health Organization’s Health Emergency Appeal 2025, over 1.6 billion people currently live in settings of conflict or displacement.

“In this critical moment, we need not only to scale up, we need to speed up and to provide the aid in a more efficient and fast manner,” Jorge Moreira da Silva, under-secretary-general and executive director, executive office of the UN Office for Project Services, told Arab News during the 4th Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum.

“I think that when an emergency happens, a natural disaster or a conflict, we don’t have the same time to plan as when we discuss development, and that is why the search capacity and the quick response is fundamental,” he said.

When asked how this can be achieved, the UN undersecretary stressed the need for more collaboration.

“Scaling up and speeding up requires more collaboration across UN agencies, more collaboration between the UN and the governments but also civil societies and the private sector,” he said.

He called for unity in emergencies, such as conflict, displacement, disease outbreaks, and climate disasters, stating: “We cannot respond quickly if we respond in a silent and fragmented manner.”

Da Silva also underlined the importance of “increasing the level of accountability and response.”

During his interview with Arab News, he commended the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center for hosting the 4th Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum.

“I was impressed to see the convening capacity of KSRelief to mobilize so many people around the world to discuss humanitarian aid (at) this critical juncture,” he said, adding that 25 percent of the world’s population lives in a conflict setting.

“Humanitarian aid has represented life-saving efforts, critical life-saving efforts for billions of people in the world, and I was glad to be a part of today’s conversation, not just about raising ambition but also … speeding up delivery.”

He spoke during a panel session on the first day of the humanitarian forum titled: “Resilient, Innovative, and Localized: The Future of Humanitarian Supply Chains.”

Da Silva reiterated the importance of collaboration, adding that “the UNOPS is an organization that is totally rooted in partnership and collaboration.”


Saudi Arabia urges greater focus on human rights in Palestine 

President of Saudi Human Rights Commission, Hala Al-Tuwaijri, delivers a speech.
Updated 25 February 2025
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Saudi Arabia urges greater focus on human rights in Palestine 

  • Saudi rights chief highlights Vision 2030’s commitment to equality and global peace at UN session in Geneva

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia called for greater focus on the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories at a UN meeting in Switzerland.

The Kingdom also reaffirmed its unwavering commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

This was part of the speech delivered by the president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission and head of the Kingdom’s delegation, Hala Al-Tuwaijri, at the high-level segment of the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Al-Tuwaijri said Saudi Arabia has made significant reforms in human rights, driven by Vision 2030, which is based on principles of equality, non-discrimination, and the right to development.

“This vision has empowered women, youth, and vulnerable groups, including persons with disabilities, the elderly, and migrant workers, while enhancing the quality of life for all,” Al-Tuwaijri said.

“Moreover, Vision 2030 has increased the efficiency of relevant authorities to host major global events and initiatives, with people and their rights at the heart of national priorities.”

Al-Tuwaijri emphasized the Kingdom’s commitment to strengthening its legislative framework, which has built a strong legal system to protect and uphold human rights.

Through comprehensive legal reforms and new legislation, Saudi Arabia has reinforced protections for all individuals. The Kingdom now embraces a diverse society with over 15 million foreigners from more than 60 nationalities — making up over 44 percent of the population — who enjoy their rights under the highest standards of legal protection, she said.

Al-Tuwaijri reaffirmed Saudi Arabia’s commitment to promoting international peace and security, guided by its core values and adherence to the UN Charter.

She also highlighted the Kingdom’s support for just causes and its proactive role in resolving global crises, including its efforts in the Ukrainian crisis.

Notably, mediation led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman resulted in several successful prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine, Al-Tuwaijri said.

“For human rights to be universally upheld, we must cultivate strong societies by confronting harmful practices that undermine social harmony, including contempt for religions, hate speech, and the weakening of family values,” she concluded.

Al-Tuwaijri reaffirmed the Kingdom’s commitment to deepening cooperation with UN human rights mechanisms, stressing the importance of respecting diverse values and embracing cultural and civilizational diversity to protect and promote human rights.