Saudi grants $33m to UNICEF’s Yemen anti-cholera fund

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre signed a $33 million grant with UNICEF on Sunday for programmes aimed at containing the cholera outbreak in Yemen.

The sum is to be used primarily to improve and secure water supplies and environmental sanitation projects.

It is part of a larger aid package of $66.7 million which Saudi had previously pledged to UNICEF.

King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre supervisor Abdullah Al-Rabia urged the UN organisation to hastily implement the programmes and for a “firm stance” against armed militias, which he accused of preventing humanitarian and medical aid from reaching the Yemeni people.

Read: Cholera has killed 1,992 people in Yemen

Saudi Arabia heads an Arab coalition which has been bombing Yemen for two years in an effort to reinstate President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi who was forced to flee the capital, Sana’a, after Houthi militias took control of the city.

Numerous human rights organisations have accused the Kingdom of war crimes as a result of its bombing campaigns which may see as indiscriminate and which have caused excessive damage to the country and a high death toll.