RIYADH: The general supervisor of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief) on Saturday met the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen at the center’s headquarters, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.
Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah met Lise Grande in Riyadh, where they discussed ways to enhance cooperation and support relief and humanitarian work in Yemen.
They also discussed ways to support food security and measures to ensure that aid reached beneficiaries in all regions of Yemen, in addition to discussing the strategic partnership between the two sides during 2019.
Grande said the humanitarian crisis in Yemen was getting worse. “It is a very difficult humanitarian crisis. That is why we are grateful to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for their contribution of $200 million provided to three UN organizations this month, with $140 million provided to the World Food Programme (WFP), $40 million to UNICEF and $20 million to the World Health Organization (WHO),” she said in a statement.
Grande praised the WFP funding, which helped to save the lives of 3 million people, and said it would be used by UNICEF and the WHO to combat cholera and improve nutrition.
Earlier, Al-Rabeeah said that Saudi foreign aid between 1996 and 2018 exceeded $86 billion. “The Kingdom supports 81 countries in a fully impartial manner,” he added,
KSRelief, which was established in May 2015 under the directive of King Salman, has implemented 996 projects in 44 countries with a combined value of $3.25 billion, SPA reported him as saying.
“Saudi Arabia hosts 12 million immigrants of different nationalities, which represent 37 percent of its population, and thus it ranks second in the world in terms of the number of immigrants, preceded only by the US. Among these immigrants are 561,911 Yemenis, 262,573 Syrians, and 249,668 people from Myanmar.”
He added that KSRelief had implemented 330 projects worth $1.99 billion in Yemen in partnership with 80 UN agencies and international and local NGOs. These included the MASAM mine clearance project, a project for rehabilitating thousands of children recruited by Houthi militias, and the establishment of artificial limb centers in Marib and Aden.
