OIC to Host High Level Meeting to Address Humanitarian Situation in Yemen

Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will host a meeting to address the humanitarian situation in Yemen on Sunday 18 December 2016 at OIC Headquarters in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

    Humanitarian crises in Yemen are one of the most critical in the world today and are having a devastating impact on civilians. The meeting comes in lines with the efforts of OIC member states and donor states to aid and help Yemeni people.

    The strategic discussion will focus on how to respond in an effective manner to the immediate and medium term needs of the people of Yemen. The meeting, which is organized in cooperation with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), will bring together high officials from major donors and representatives of the main humanitarian actors in Yemen and will also address how to coordinate future humanitarian and developmental activities.

    The meeting will take stock of the current humanitarian situation, anticipated future developments, ongoing response and key operational and financial challenges. The meeting will aim to reach an agreement on the next steps for joint mobilization of resources to assist the Yemeni people.

    The meeting will also seek to gather support for a UN OIC high-level humanitarian pledging conference to be held in 2017 to mobilize the necessary resources in support of the people of Yemen.

    It is worth mentioning that this meeting is taking place in implementation of the OIC decision reflected in the Final Communique of the OIC's 13th Islamic Summit Conference held in Istanbul in April 2016, that requested the OIC Secretary General to hold an international conference to mobilize the necessary resources in order to provide humanitarian and development assistance to the people of Yemen.

    The 43rd Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers held in Tashkent, Republic of Uzbekistan on 18-19 October 2016 also appealed to Member States and NGOs to generously extend the necessary humanitarian assistance to the people of Yemen to ease the plight of the affected people.

Source: QNA