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Saudi Arabia Largest Donor to Humanitarian Effort in Yemen

Ceremony to lay the cornerstone of a school in Abyan, Yemen, with Saudi funding (SDRPY)
Ceremony to lay the cornerstone of a school in Abyan, Yemen, with Saudi funding (SDRPY)
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Saudi Arabia Largest Donor to Humanitarian Effort in Yemen

Ceremony to lay the cornerstone of a school in Abyan, Yemen, with Saudi funding (SDRPY)
Ceremony to lay the cornerstone of a school in Abyan, Yemen, with Saudi funding (SDRPY)

Saudi Arabia has been Yemen's largest donor since the beginning of the war launched by the Houthi militia, with 30 percent of the total aid provided to the country, according to data issued by the Yemeni government and the United Nations.

The data showed that the development financing gap widened significantly due to the cumulative GDP losses totaling about $126 billion and essential recovery and reconstruction needs, estimated at between $20 and $25 billion, and include 12 sectors and 16 cities.

- Funds go to relief

The report, issued by the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation funded by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) country office on key priorities for recovery and reconstruction, estimated that the data is "not complete."

The report stressed that the situation "requires a comprehensive assessment of the damage" from late 2014 until now to reach more accurate estimates of recovery and reconstruction needs.

Since the beginning of the conflict, most of the funds sent to Yemen have been directed to humanitarian and relief aid as the number of people in need of assistance continues to increase.

According to the report, the number increased in the last two years from 7.20 million in 2021 to 18 million in 2022, 9.12 million of which are urgently needed, according to the Humanitarian Needs Overview.

- Saudi Arabia provided 30%

The report indicated that official development aid recorded an increase from about $3.1 billion in 2014 to $5.3 billion in 2017, coinciding with the intensification of war and the urgent growing need for humanitarian aid.

Humanitarian aid stabilized at about $7.2 billion in 2020, and the per capita share of development aid increased to $116 in 2017 before declining to $85.26 in 2020.

The report asserted that Saudi Arabia was at the forefront of donor countries with about 30 percent, followed by UAE with about 25 percent, then the US, the World Bank, and the UK.

It shows that the volume of total investment as a percentage of GDP averaged 1.14 percent between 2014 and 2020 and says that the highest contribution of the volume of total investments to GDP amounted to 19 percent in 2019.

According to the report, private investment also recorded an average of 2.11 percent of GDP compared to an average of three percent for public investment for the same period, given the limited state budget, investment expenditures, and war conditions.

- A decline in per capita

The report stated that at the beginning of the conflict, the donor funds were directed toward humanitarian relief to meet the emergencies and their repercussions on the population, who lost their homes and sources of income, forcing them to flee.

The report expected about 19 million people would suffer from acute food insecurity during the second half of this year, while about 538,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition. It warned that they risk losing their lives, with over four million displaced persons.

According to the report, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen has become one of the worst crises in the world.

The data showed that the financial requirement is about $6.1 billion, but the pledges amounted to about $900 million, with a coverage of 3.56 percent.

Requirements for funding humanitarian needs continued to rise and amounted to $3.4 billion in 2022, but the percentage of donor pledges coverage amounted to only 2.30 percent, which is the lowest during the period of conflict and war.

The low percentage may have come from donors' tendency to prioritize the war crisis in Ukraine, where donor pledges reached 2.38 percent, the year that witnessed the coronavirus outbreak, which certainly affected the priorities of donor countries.

The report concludes that, on average, donor pledges for the humanitarian response did not exceed 9.48 percent for 2015-2022, contributing to funding gaps for humanitarian needs at the end of each year.

According to the UN classification, the per capita share of foreign aid in Yemen is the lowest at the regional level and was estimated at $41 in 2013, compared to about $74 for regional countries and about $51 for developing countries.

The data also indicate that the average per capita share of foreign aid in Yemen was at most $4.22 during 1991-2013 and that the impact of this development was not significantly tangible, as the weak economic situation contributed to the conflict.

Most development support programs were halted, which contributed to the decline in economic growth and even led to negative growth rates and cumulative losses in the gross domestic product, increasing poverty and unemployment rates, according to the report.

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Arab World

50 Years after Lebanon's Civil War Began, a Bullet-riddled Bus Stands as a Reminder

FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)
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50 Years after Lebanon's Civil War Began, a Bullet-riddled Bus Stands as a Reminder

FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - A militiaman aims his rifle down an alley at Christian forces on the other side of the Green Line, in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 4, 1982. (AP Photo, File)

It was an ordinary day in Beirut. In one part of Lebanon's capital, a church was inaugurated, with the leader of the Christian Kataeb party there. In another, Palestinian factions held a military parade. Kataeb and Palestinians had clashed, again, that morning.

What happened next on April 13, 1975, would change the course of Lebanon, plunging it into 15 years of civil war that would kill about 150,000 people, leave 17,000 missing and lead to foreign intervention. Beirut became synonymous with snipers, kidnappings and car bombs.

Lebanon has never fully grappled with the war's legacy, and in many ways it has never fully recovered, 50 years later. The government on Sunday marked the anniversary with a small ceremony and minute of silence, a rare official acknowledgement of the legacy of the conflict.

The massacre Unrest had been brewing. Palestinian militants had begun launching attacks against Israel from Lebanese territory. Leftist groups and many Muslims in Lebanon sympathized with the Palestinian cause. Christians and some other groups saw the Palestinian militants as a threat.

At the time, Mohammad Othman was 16, a Palestinian refugee in the Tel al-Zaatar camp east of Beirut.

Three buses had left camp that morning, carrying students like him as well as militants from a coalition of hardline factions that had broken away from the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They passed through the Ein Rummaneh neighborhood without incident and joined the military parade.

The buses were supposed to return together, but some participants were tired after marching and wanted to go back early. They hired a small bus from the street, Othman said. Thirty-three people packed in.

They were unaware that earlier that day, small clashes had broken out between Palestinians and Kataeb Party members guarding the church in Ein Rummaneh. A bodyguard for party leader Pierre Gemayel had been killed.

Suddenly the road was blocked, and gunmen began shooting at the bus “from all sides,” Othman recalled.

Some passengers had guns they had carried in the parade, Othman said, but they were unable to draw them quickly in the crowded bus.

A camp neighbor fell dead on top of him. The man’s 9-year-old son was also killed. Othman was shot in the shoulder.

“The shooting didn’t stop for about 45 minutes until they thought everyone was dead,” he said. Othman said paramedics who eventually arrived had a confrontation with armed men who tried to stop them from evacuating him, The Associated Press said.

Twenty-two people were killed.

Conflicting narratives

Some Lebanese say the men who attacked the bus were responding to an assassination attempt against Gemayel by Palestinian militants. Others say the Kataeb had set up an ambush intended to spark a wider conflict.

Marwan Chahine, a Lebanese-French journalist who wrote a book about the events of April 13, 1975, said he believes both narratives are wrong.

Chahine said he found no evidence of an attempt to kill Gemayel, who had left the church by the time his bodyguard was shot. And he said the attack on the bus appeared to be more a matter of trigger-happy young men at a checkpoint than a “planned operation.”

There had been past confrontations, "but I think this one took this proportion because it arrived after many others and at a point when the authority of the state was very weak,” Chahine said.

The Lebanese army had largely ceded control to militias, and it did not respond to the events in Ein Rummaneh that day. The armed Palestinian factions had been increasingly prominent in Lebanon after the PLO was driven out of Jordan in 1970, and Lebanese Christians had also increasingly armed themselves.

“The Kataeb would say that the Palestinians were a state within a state,” Chahine said. “But the reality was, you had two states in a state. Nobody was following any rules."

Selim Sayegh, a member of parliament with the Kataeb Party who was 14 and living in Ein Rummaneh when the fighting started, said he believes war had been inevitable since the Lebanese army backed down from an attempt to take control of Palestinian camps two years earlier.

Sayegh said men at the checkpoint that day saw a bus full of Palestinians with “weapons apparent” and "thought that is the second wave of the operation” that started with the killing of Gemayel's bodyguard.

The war unfolded quickly from there. Alliances shifted. New factions formed. Israel and Syria occupied parts of the country. The United States intervened, and the US embassy and Marine barracks were targeted by bombings. Beirut was divided between Christian and Muslim sectors.

In response to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, a Shiite militant group was formed in the early 1980s with Iranian backing: Hezbollah. It would grow to be arguably the most powerful armed non-state group in the region.

Hezbollah was the only militant group allowed to keep its weapons after Lebanon's civil war, given special status as a “resistance force” because Israel was still in southern Lebanon. After the group was badly weakened last year in a war with Israel that ended with a ceasefire, there has been increasing pressure for it to disarm.

The survivors

Othman said he became a fighter after the war started because “there were no longer schools or anything else to do.” Later he would disarm and became a pharmacist.

He remembers being bewildered when a peace accord in 1989 ushered in the end of civil war: “All this war and bombing, and in the end they make some deals and it’s all over.”

Of the 10 others who survived the bus attack, he said, three were killed a year later when Christian militias attacked the Tel al-Zaatar camp. Another was killed in a 1981 bombing at the Iraqi embassy. A couple died of natural causes, one lives in Germany, and he has lost track of the others.

The bus has also survived, as a reminder.

Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the attack, it was towed from storage on a farm to the private Nabu Museum in Heri, north of Beirut. Visitors took photos with it and peered into bullet holes in its rusted sides.

Ghida Margie Fakih, a museum spokesperson, said the bus will remain on display indefinitely as a “wake-up call” to remind Lebanese not to go down the path of conflict again.

The bus “changed the whole history in Lebanon and took us somewhere that nobody wanted to go,” she said.