Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has historically provided substantial volumes of both official development assistance (ODA) and humanitarian aid. However, its humanitarian aid is almost certainly under-reported and current data does not necessarily reflect its total contributions.

In 2008 Saudi Arabia gave US$4.9 billion in ODA – the highest amount since 1990 – and $566 million in humanitarian aid, making it the seventh largest government donor of humanitarian aid that year and the most generous government donor in terms of humanitarian aid as a proportion of gross national income (GNI), at 0.13%. Since 2000 it has featured as one of the top two largest non-DAC humanitarian aid donors, with its humanitarian aid characterised by large one-off contributions. For example, in 2001 98% or US$645million of its US$657 million in humanitarian aid was channelled to Palestine/OPT and in 2008 US$339 million out of a total of US$566 million went to the World Food Programme (WFP)’s special appeal on the food crisis.

While Saudi Arabia gives a significant amount of humanitarian aid, there is no single agency in charge of coordination and there is currently limited internal capacity to manage humanitarian processes and response. Saudi Arabia has no humanitarian aid policy and is not actively engaged in international humanitarian mechanisms or coordination networks (GPPi).