with various United Nations organs to deal with this worsening humanitarian disaster by working to provide adequate solutions for protection and appropriate financial support as well as offer support to countries receiving refugees.
“Saudi Arabia has received since the beginning of the Syrian crisis 2.5 million Syrian refugees and has been careful not to treat them as refugees or put them in refugee camps in order to preserve their dignity and safety. It gave them complete freedom of movement, and awarded those who wanted to stay in the kingdom — their numbers are in the hundreds of thousands — legal residence like the rest of expatriates, with all consequent rights to free health care, work and education.
The number of Syrian students receiving free education totalled more than 100,000. Saudi efforts have not been confined to receiving and hosting the Syrian brothers after their humanitarian tragedy in their country, but extended to include support and care for millions of Syrian refugees in their country’s neighbours, Jordan, Lebanon and other states.
The efforts included providing humanitarian assistance in coordination with the governments of their host countries, as well as with international humanitarian relief organisations, whether through financial or in-kind support,” he said.
The diplomat explained that the value of the humanitarian assistance provided by Saudi Arabia for the Syrians amounted to about $700 million, according to the statistics of the third International Donors Conference, held in Kuwait on March 31.
“The humanitarian aid also included providing food, health, residential and educational services, as well as the establishment of Saudi specialist clinics in various refugee camps most important of which is Al Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and in the border crossings refugee camps as these specialised clinics were able to provide all kinds of vaccines, preventive treatments, medical care and surgical procedures.
Saudi Arabia also paid for other campaigns to accommodate a large number of special humanitarian cases of Syrian families in both Lebanon and Syria,” he added.
Concrete steps must be taken to address this humanitarian disaster, and not just words of sympathy and expressions of concern.
“We must not allow fear from the risk of terrorist attacks and the escalation of racist rhetoric to make us lose the spirit of solidarity with refugees and we must provide them with protection and not subject them to persecution and discrimination in accordance with international law and humanitarian norms. We must work to find appropriate international mechanisms according to the standards of assuming common responsibility among countries,” he said.
“The most important thing we can do to resolve the refugee issue is to address the root causes of the crises that cause them to seek refuge outside their home countries. Most important of them are political crises.
Therefore, once again, we recall our call for serious work towards a political solution to the Syrian crisis according to Geneva Declaration-1 promptly and practically, and not just by slogans or attempts to circumvent the will of the Syrian people, prolong the human suffering and increase numbers of Syrian refugees,” he said.