Victims of poverty, internal strife and natural disasters in any part of the world can be assured of the help in cash and kind from Saudis.
A Saudi cargo plane loaded with 70 tons of food arrived in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Thursday. More aid is to follow within the week, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Thursday.
The aid is to help the displaced people in Yemen. “Yemen is facing a new wave of internal displacement as tens of thousands of civilians flee tribal clashes in the north and renewed fighting between government troops and militant groups in the south,” a report of the United Nation’s refugee agency UNHCR said earlier this month.
This aid provided by the Kingdom is the latest in the billions of riyals worth of Saudi humanitarian aid for millions of people suffering from natural calamities, wars, famine and hunger the world over.
Saudi Arabia’s contributions have far exceeded those of any traditional donors such as the members of Organization of Economic Cooperation’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
Following a cyclone in Bangladesh in 2007, which killed more than 3,000 and left millions homeless, the Kingdom gave Bangladesh $158 million for humanitarian purposes compared to $20 million from the United States.
Following the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the Kingdom made $50 million available to the Emergency Response Fund, a pooled funding mechanism set up by the United Nations. Saudi Arabia pledged to Pakistan shortly after a flood in 2010 aid worth $220 million - surpassing the pledges of all European donors put together ($209 million.)
The International Civil Defense Organization awarded Saudi Arabia its Gold Medal in recognition of the large-scale participation of the Kingdom in rescue operations during the aftermath of the flood in Pakistan. The Kingdom had set up two 200-bed field hospitals to help the flood victims. Each hospital had an operation room, laboratory, pharmacy, intensive care unit and X-ray room.
In 2008, Saudi Arabia provided $500 million in cash to the World Food Program, the largest contribution in the program’s history.
The Kingdom has also been the leader in assisting countries in the Arab and Muslim world for development apart from humanitarian aid. Between 1975 and 2005, total Saudi aid to developing countries amounted to $90 billion, accounting for 3.7 percent of its annual gross domestic product (GDP), far higher than the UN’s target of 0.7 percent of GDP for development assistance and four times the average achieved by OECD-DAC countries. Saudi Arabia also helps finance many key regional development funds and instruments.
Saudi Arabia is one of the largest providers of aid to the Palestinian people. Between 2002 and 2007, Saudi Arabia has given more than $480 million in monetary support to the Palestinian Authority, and has supported Palestinian refugees by contributing to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
The Saudi government announced a $60 million aid package to the drought and famine-stricken population in Somalia in July 2011.
The Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, the charity organization founded in 1993 by Defense Minister Prince Salman, had contributed $600 million in aid to Bosnian Muslims impoverished by the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
The inter-ethnic conflict between Bosnia’s Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives and forced some 2.2 million people, or half its population, to flee their homes.