Saudi Arabia has a long and positive history of providing support to UN efforts around the world for addressing natural disaster and other crisis response activities. As seen in recent years, Saudi Arabia has supported $50million grant to the UN Common Emergency Relief Fund for earthquake response in Haiti, $50million to the UN for response activities in Somalia, $83million for the UN efforts in Pakistan. As part of these efforts, UNDP plays the role of crisis early recovery, supporting creation of post-crisis job creation and other factors to enable resumption of normal life.

According to OECD statistics, in fact Saudi Arabia is now the largest southern provider of Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), with about $5billion per years going to humanitarian efforts mainly through bilateral channels as well as multilateral channels like the UN. As noted in the UNDP-supported National MDG Report of 2010 under MDG Goal 8 on Global Partnerships for Development, since 1973, the Kingdom has provided over $100billion to over 87 developing countries. Key partners are the Saudi Fund for Development and the Ministry of Finance.

UNDP Saudi Arabia approached this corporate practice area with the overriding objective of building national capacities for a robust preparedness to mitigate possible impacts of natural disasters. It is recognized that natural disasters, although very limited in the context of Saudi Arabia, have the potential to hamper the progress of human development. For this reason, UNDP is building a partnership with the Government to maintain the institutional capacity of responding to natural disasters at its peak throughout the year. As a country that provides substantial humanitarian assistance to affected communities throughout the globe, Saudi Arabia is also keen on benefiting from the UN vast technical experiences in disaster response tools and services, such as emergency relief through the rapid deployment mechanisms. In this framework, UNDP is drawing on the know-how and technical capabilities of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

4.1 Conflict prevention and peace-building:

- Technical Assistance to the Civil Defense - MoU
The project is heading towards formulation of a comprehensive Results and Resources Framework with the objective of revising bases of partnership between the Civil Defense, the Un Office for Humanitarian Affairs and UNDP.

 Al-Madinah Urban Observatory Network:

Although this project falls under Governance practice area, yet a major output for 2010 is relevant to crisis prevention. With UNDP-support, the project is in the process of commissioning a study on flash floods and their potential impacts on development.

Top