BRUSSELS — Advisor at the Royal Court and Supervisor General of King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief) Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah headed Saudi Arabia’s delegation participating in the European Humanitarian Forum taking place in the Belgian capital Brussels on Tuesday with the participation of heads of donor countries and UN organizations.

Al-Rabeeah also took part in a ministerial meeting for the biggest 10 donors, during which the participants discussed challenges facing the international humanitarian action due to the increasing gap between financial resources and humanitarian needs. The meeting also discussed the new challenges as a result of increasing prices of grains due to the events in Ukraine, as well as the economic impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Meanwhile, Dr. Al-Rabeeah, on the sidelines of the forum, held separate meetings with Assistant Director General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations at the European Commission Michael Köhler, Chair of the Delegation for relations with the Arabian Peninsula at the European Parliament Hannah Neumann, Special Envoy for Famine Prevention and Humanitarian Affairs at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Nick Dyer, Head of the Department for UN Policy, Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs Carl Skau, and Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming at USAID Isobel Coleman. All the meeting were held in the presence of Saudi Ambassador to EU Eng. Saad bin Mohammed Al-Arifi.

During the meetings, Dr. Al-Rabeeah reviewed Saudi Arabia’s leading role in supporting humanitarian needs. He said Saudi Arabia, through KSrelief, works in 79 countries around the world. The meetings also went over means to address the gap between resources and humanitarian needs.

The supervisor general also discussed multiple global crises, noting that the Kingdom greatly contributes to supporting the humanitarian action and shares concern with world powers regarding the dire needs in some of the poorest countries as a result of hike in food prices and their negative impacts on these societies.

The meetings also went over Saudi Arabia’s presidency of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in mid-2022, which embodies the Kingdom’s pivotal role in humanitarian work and its high ability to administrate it with full efficiency. — SPA