Saudi Arabia spends over USD 18 billion on ‘visitor’ refugees in 12 years

Riyadh: King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSRelief) has spent a total of 18.6 billion dollars aid on visitor refugees within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) since 2011 until the current year 2023.

Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that hosts the largest number of refugees — it provides free treatment and education to Syrian refugees, and promotes integration and job opportunities in public schools.

These refugees hail from Yemen and Syria as well as Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar.

As per a report by Arabic daily Okaz, the KSRelief revealed the distribution of the total aid based on the nationality of the beneficiaries.

• Yemenis — 10,444,468,449 dollars

• Syrians — 5,879,144,198 dollars

• Rohingya — 2,253,901,486 dollars

Total amounts of aid spent on the following sectors

• Services provided by the General Directorate of Passports — 7,439,737,181 dollars

• Education — 5,614,147,528 dollars

• Health — 5,523,629,424 dollars

KSRelief reported in 2022 that Saudi Arabia hosted nearly 1.07 million refugees in recent years, which is equivalent to 5.5 percent of the Saudi population.