The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday a new donation made to King Salman Relief and Humanitarian Work activities in Yemen worth $150 million, in addition to a previously allotted $100 million dispensed to the Riyadh-based in early 2017.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres had urged countries on Tuesday to pitch in to help prevent a looming famine in war-torn Yemen, warning that children especially were already dying at an alarming rate.
The donation was announced in a speech by Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Rabeaa, Consultant at the Royal Court and supervisor general of the center, who leads the Kingdom’s delegation to the Donors Conference in Geneva, assigned to find funds for the humanitarian response plan for Yemen 2017.
Al-Rabeaa explained that the new donation comes as part of the total $8.2 billion committed by the Kingdom within its humanitarian and developmental assistance since April 2015 to date, said the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
“Yemen today is experiencing a tragedy of immense proportions,” the UN Secretary General told country representatives gathered in Geneva for an aid pledging conference.
“We are witnessing the starving and the crippling of an entire generation,” he said, adding that Yemen is gripped by “the world’s largest hunger crisis”.
Yemen’s war has pitted pro-government forces against Iran-aligned Houthi insurgents and their allies, renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. A Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to help the government retake the capital Sanaa.
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