- Al Muraikhi said, “The meeting in Doha is an important platform for the fulfillment of efforts to promote and organize humanitarian charitable work in the region.”
- Amin Awad stated, “The network is a major breakthrough to let the civil society organizations in our region catch up with their counterparts in the world.”
- Al Ghamdi confirmed, “The meeting contributes to formalizing a clear vision to deal with the successive crises of refugees and displaced people in the region.”
Qatar Charity has hosted the final consultations meeting, organized by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees with participation of the representatives of 25 organizations from civil society organizations in the region, to create a civil society network for refugees and displaced people in the Middle East and North Africa.
The agenda of the meeting has included six sessions. The opening session has been allotted to the speech of the UN Secretary-General Humanitarian Envoy, HE Dr. Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Muraikhi, Amin Awad, UNHCR Director for Middle East and North Africa Operations, and Mohammed Al Ghamdi, the Executive Director of International Development in QC, who has delivered the speech of the host party. Then they had the first session which was devoted to the follow-up to national consultations and presentations given by members of the network. The second session centered on discussing the message the network intends to convey, the vision, and the guiding principles whereas the debates of the third and fourth sessions revolved around the network membership requirements and administrative structure. Finally, the fifth and sixth sessions were about thoroughly researching the financial resources, priorities, and the schedule of activities in the 2017.
A major breakthrough
Amin Awad, UNHCR Director for Middle East and North Africa Operations, has appreciated QC being the host of the meeting which is going to be a great breakthrough towards gathering of the civil society organizations in the Middle East and North Africa that are separated, and having them engaged in one single network in order to confront the big challenges caused by the political changes in a number of countries in the region.
He also focused in his speech on the serious statistics that show the magnitude of the disaster in the region, pointing out that people of the region make up almost 6% of the world's population at a time where the refugees and displaced people rate up in our region to 50% of the number of those in the whole world. Consequently, the international and civil society organizations, and all the vital forces in the region should exert determined efforts to cope with this problem.
Catching up with the counterparts
Awad stated that thousands of refugees daily go through the desert and then the Mediterranean Sea looking forward to getting to Europe, and most of them have lost their life during this journey. Had they found a real aid concerning their needs and requirements, they wouldn’t have embarked on such adventure. He said, “That’s why we have made it to this meeting in order to keenly seek highly promoting our contribution to humanitarian work and catching up with other counterparts in the world through the exchange of experiences among world organizations.”
An important platform
The UN Secretary-General Humanitarian Envoy, HE Dr. Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Muraikhi, has extended his sincere thanks to QC and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for organizing and hosting this meeting which is believed to be an important platform of accomplishment of remarkable efforts to successfully organize and reinforce the humanitarian charitable work and to accumulate the civil society organizations’ efforts to face the difficult circumstances in the Middle East and North Africa, where there are half of the whole number of refugees and displaced people in the world.
Moreover, he mentioned that 143 million people in 33 countries are in need of humanitarian aid, alerting that the most vulnerable groups of them need to provide nearly $ 23 billion just in 2017. And imagine that half of them are found in this particular region! This accordingly forces to create a network of civil society organizations and they hope to fill the largest gap to aid these numbers which have no parallels in history.
A creative idea
Mohammed Al Ghamdi, the Executive Director of International Development in QC, has welcomed the representative of the United Nations Organization and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the members of civil society organizations who were involved in final consultations to create the network as culmination of a series of meetings that began some time ago to discuss the creative idea submitted by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in regard with the need to establish a regional network to confront the growing number of refugees and displaced people in the region.
He explained that such networks will enhance the capabilities of humanitarian and civil society organizations and increase the level of enthusiastic response to such a big crisis and huge numbers of refugees and displaced people. “If we don’t have our strategic vision to deal with these refugees and displaced people and know exactly how we can offer them services, our efforts would be insufficient.”, Mohammed Al Ghamdi mentioned. From this perspective, he confirmed that the network will be the vehicle for refugees and displaced people needs, and will be the basis for the integration of roles, expressing his hope that the meeting comes out at the end of the day with practical steps to establish the network after preparing and equipping which have lasted for months.
It is noteworthy that civil society network had held a regional workshop in Amman on 15-16 December, 2016 and it was attended by 70 participants from civil society organizations, International Humanitarian Organizations, lawyers, academics and journalists. They discussed the role of the private sector in responding to refugee crises in the Middle East and North Africa; protection regional priorities and solutions; building legal frameworks, and social cohesion.
