UAE announces $2.6 million pledge for UN development activities in 2018

The United Arab Emirates has announced a pledge of US$2.6 million, AED 9.6 million, at the 2017 UN Pledging Conference for Development Activities, which provides a preliminary sense of 2018 funding for a number of UN development funds and programmes.

Saud Al Shamsi, Councellor at the Permanent Mission of the UAE to the UN, reaffirmed the UAE’s commitment to supporting the UN’s development activities, and announced some confirmed UAE contributions. These contributions are in addition to a $5 million contribution to UN-Women, which is part of a $15 million commitment to be disbursed over the next three years. This brings the total of UAE pledges for 2018 to $7.6m, AED 27.9 million, so far.

The UAE’s pledge of $2.6 million includes donations of $1 million to the core budget of UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, as well as $520,000 to the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, of which $500,000 will go to the Trust Fund for the Strengthening of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The UAE also pledged $324,000 for the UN Development Programme’s core budget, $200,000 for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and $100,000 for the core budget of the UN Children’s Fund. Additionally, the UAE pledged $100,000 towards the Aid to Navigation Fund of the Cooperative Mechanism on Safety of Navigation and Environmental Protection in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore.

As part of the pledge, the UAE allocated $50,000 to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, while the UN Environment Programme, the UN Fund for South-South Cooperation and the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes will receive $40,000 each. The UAE has pledged $30,000 to the UN Voluntary Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, and $20,000 to the Perez-Guerrero Trust Fund for South-South Cooperation. In addition, the UAE has pledged $10,000 each for the UN Institute for Training and Research, the UN Population Fund, the UN Voluntary Fund on Disability, the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, the UN Voluntary Trust Fund for the Convention to Combat Desertification, and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research.

The UAE noted that the announced contributions were not exhaustive, and that further contributions will be communicated to the Secretariat once finalized and approved. The OECD Development Assistance Committee consistently ranks the UAE as one of the largest donors globally, at over 1 percent of gross national income. In recent years, a greater share of UAE’s aid has been disbursed through the UN.