GCC assistance to Yemen at $15 bn in ten years

The Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, member states have provided assistance to Yemen worth more than US$15 billion over the last ten years, a senior GCC official revealed.

''Since 2015 until August 2017, the amount of humanitarian assistance provided to Yemen stood at $3 billion. Pledges of GCC donors within the international response plan for 2017 was more than $450 million while that outside the response plan amounted to $2.7 billion,'' said Dr. Abdulaziz bin Hamad Al-Owaisheq, Assistant Secretary-General of the GCC for Political Affairs and Negotiations.

He was speaking at a UN-organised, high-level meeting, which was held in New York on Friday on the fringes of the UN General Assembly's 72nd session, to discuss the humanitarian situation in Yemen.

During the meeting, in which GCC participated as an associate president together with the Kingdom of Sweden and the Kingdom of Holland, Dr. Al-Owaisheq confirmed the pioneering role of the GCC member countries in providing support for Yemen to help its people sustain the current crisis.

Developmental assistance, appropriated for infrastructure and rehabilitation projects, was over $11 billion. The GCC states have donated more than $90 million to curb cholera in Yemen and provided more than $600 tonnes of venous solutions targeting more than 350,000 beneficiaries, he informed.

Dr. Al-Owaisheq urged the donor community to increase their finance levels for the response plan for Yemen and accelerate the procedure of disbursing the pledges they made at Geneva on 25th April, 2017. He noted that some countries including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain and the United States have financed the plan with more than they previously pledged.