Manama:
Addressing the 70th session of the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural), Kuwait reiterated its commitment to contribute to the efforts of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to help the refugees and the internally-displaced people around the globe, Kuwait News Agency (kuna) reported.
Anwar Nayef Al Dhafiri, member of the Kuwaiti mission to the session, said Kuwait’s voluntary contributions to the UNHCR-led relief effort stem from a moral and humanitarian responsibility.
In addition to voluntary assistance by its national government and nongovernment institutions, Kuwait commits one million dollars to the UN Refugee Agency annually, she said.
She commended the regional plan for responding to the Syrian crisis (2015-2016), co-led by the UNHCR and the UNDP in collaboration with the five countries hosting Syrian refugees, the official news agency said.
Al Dhafiri recalled that Kuwait hosted three UN international humanitarian pledging conferences on Syria in the last three years to mobilise support and raise funds for the Syrian refugees.
The conferences led to pledges by international donor amounting to $7.6 billion (Dh27.91 billion), including $1.03 billion from Kuwait, Al Dhafiri said. A large part of the Kuwaiti funding went to the UNHCR activities in the refugee host countries.
Kuwait has recently completed the delivery of assistance amounting in value to $200 million to the internally-displaced people in Iraq, she added.
Meanwhile, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said 60 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced as a result of war and persecution.
“With 15 new or reignited conflicts in the past five years alone, the number of people forced from their homes by conflict every single day has nearly quadrupled — from under 11,000 in 2010 to 42,500 last year,” he said.
“The corresponding increase in humanitarian needs has overwhelmed the global response capacity. We need to face the truth: the international multilateral humanitarian community — UN agencies, the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement, and NGOs — even when combining all its resources, is no longer able to provide the core protection and the basic life-saving assistance which the people we care for need and are entitled to receive,” he said in a statement on questions relating to refugees, returnees and displaced persons.
Al Dhafiri voiced profound concern over the suffering of the refugees and displaced people in Iraq as a result of the terrorist attacks by Daesh.
On Yemen, Al Dhafiri said the instability, resulting from the Al Houthi aggression, prompted Kuwait to donate $100 million to the efforts meant to cover the basic humanitarian needs of the displaced persons.
Regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, she urged the international community to apply pressure on Israel to end the prolonged suffering of the Palestinian refugees and ensure the refugees’ right to return to their homeland.
Nearly five million Palestinian refugees have been suffering from statelessness over the last six decades due to failure of the Israeli occupation authorities to meet their obligations under the international humanitarian law, she added.
