Over the last 10 years, the UAE exemplified the spirit of giving as one of the pillars of its soft power with its foreign aid totalling to AED206.034 billion ($56.14 billion) from 2010 to 2021.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MoFAIC) said this reflects the country’s ongoing support to global efforts help vulnerable communities across the globe through humanitarian and charitable aid, especially for developing countries.
MoFAIC highlighted that the UAE was ranked the world’s leading development aid donor for four consecutive years, and ranked second and fourth in other years, state news agency WAM reported.
The UAE’s foreign aid consists of three key categories, which are development, humanitarian and charitable aid, MoFAIC added.
The development aid provided by the UAE accounted for some 87.7 percent of the total value of its foreign aid, while humanitarian and charitable aid accounted for 9.9 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.
Around 59.1 percent of the UAE’s total development aid was in the form of grants, which recipient countries are not required to repay, while concessional loans accounted for the other 40.9 percent.
The UAE’s foreign aid covered 25 key sectors and 131 sub-sectors, according to MoFAIC’s report.
The report addressed the geographical distribution of Emirati foreign aid from 2010 to 2021, with the African continent accounting for nearly half, Asian countries for around 40 percent, and Europe, the Americas and Oceania for nearly 5 percent, while multilateral programmes and organisations received around 5 percent of the total foreign aid.
The report explained that UAE foreign aid helped achieve the sustainable development plan set by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2015, offering AED110.467 billion (US$30.1 billion) of foreign aid between 2016 and 2020.
The UAE also supported the renewable energy sector from 2010 to 2020 with foreign aid amounting to around AED1.97 billion (US$537.7 million), highlighting that the UAE-Caribbean Renewable Energy Fund (UAE-CREF), and the UAE-Pacific Partnership Fund (UAE-PPF) received US$50 million each.
MoFAIC stressed the UAE’s keenness to empower women in priority sectors through its foreign aid policy. In 2018, the country launched the ‘100% Women Policy’, stipulating Emirati foreign aid will target female empowerment and gender equality by 2021. From 2016 to 2020, over AED6.17 billion (US$1.68 billion) was allocated to women’s empowerment and protection, accounting for 6.2 percent of the UAE’s total foreign aid.
The UAE’s international efforts to address the COVID-19 pandemic included providing over 2,250 tonnes of medical aid to nearly 136 countries.
International organisations operating from the International Humanitarian City in Dubai also sent over 955 aid shipments to 177 countries.
The UAE also provided support to the World Health Organisation and the World Food Program by providing around 500,000 PCR test kits, at a value of AED36.7 million (around US$10 million), in addition to aiding in the transport of two field hospitals from Norway and Belgium to Ghana and Ethiopia at a cost of US$4 million.
DID YOU KNOW? AID FOR PHILIPPINES
In April 2020, the UAE had sent an aid plane containing 7 metric tons of medical supplies to the Philippines to bolster the country’s efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19. The aid will assist approximately 7,000 medical professionals as they work to contain the virus.
When Typhoon Rolly, a Category 5 typhoon dubbed as the strongest storm in 2020, hit the Philippines in November, the Gulf country also sent AED35 million worth of humanitarian assistance for affected Filipinos.
