Five months before the formation of the UAE in July 1971, Sheikh Zayed set out a marker for the new country’s foreign policy as a commitment to the stability, prosperity and peace of other nations.
With capital of Dh500 million, the future President, then Ruler of Abu Dhabi, created the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD). Within three years, the fund had spent Dh377 million on 10 aid projects in Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Forty-four years later, that sum stands at more than Dh35 billion on 325 projects in 59 countries.
Even more impressive is that ADFD is today just one of more than 45 organisations handing out overseas aid from the UAE. Today the country is the world’s largest giver of official development aid relative to its national income, with Dh36 billion provided to developing countries between 2010 and 2014 alone.
In 1983, Sheikh Zayed established the Red Crescent in the UAE. Since then, the authority has responded to emergencies and implemented health programmes in more than 100 countries, maintaining the international principles of non-alignment, non-intervention and independence.
This year, the Red Crescent spent Dh664 million on humanitarian and development programmes in Yemen.
Its Yemen: We Care campaign raised more than Dh500 million in just six days to help rebuild the country. The connection with Yemen goes back many years. The Marib Dam, recently recaptured from the Houthi insurgency, was built with UAE support in the 1980s — just one of many humanitarian projects that ensured fruitful relations between the two states for decades to come.
The Red Crescent is also playing a huge role in the UAE’s humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees — providing Dh600 million of the total Dh2 billion that the country has raised in the past three years.
Support for Arab neighbours is intuitive to the UAE’s aim of peace and prosperity across the region. Diplomatic relations go back as far as 1959, when Gamal Abdel Nasser agreed to provide Abu Dhabi with Egyptian teachers, engineers and agricultural experts. From 1971 until last year, the UAE provided almost Dh47.5 billion in humanitarian and development aid to Egypt.
However, the UAE has not just offered support to its Arab neighbours, but to all developing nations. In 1975, it loaned $100 million to support programmes in Pakistan — one of its first diplomatic partners. It has continued to support Pakistan’s development; funding educational institutions, hospitals and infrastructure. Numerous complexes, such as the Sheikh Zayed Medical Complex in Karachi, have been named after the Founding President, in recognition of both his and the UAE’s generosity.
In times of crisis, the UAE has extended a crucial helping hand. In 2005, Sheikh Khalifa, the President, pledged $100 million and the Red Crescent raised $8 million for earthquake recovery in Pakistan and India. Five years later, when Pakistan was ravaged by floods, the UAE donated more than $30 million.
The Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan Bridge on the Swat River — completed by the Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Foundation in 2013 — replaced a crossing washed away in floods. The bridge, the largest in the region, serves 4,000 vehicles a day. Since 2008, the foundation has also worked with the embassies of other countries to help almost 2,000 low-income pilgrims travel to Mecca.
Pakistan has also benefited from a campaign to eradicate polio launched in 2011 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Though Dh367.3 million was first pledged, two years later the campaign scaled up its ambition, with Dh440 promised towards eradicating the disease by 2018.
Almost 87 million vaccines have been distributed in Pakistan. Vaccinators in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have given the two-drop oral polio vaccine to more than 20 million children under five. The number of polio cases in Pakistan has fallen to 38 so far this year from 328 in 2014. Afghanistan’s number has more than halved, to 13.
Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Sheikh Zayed cut ties in Afghanistan with the Taliban. After their overthrow, the UAE was ready to work with the new government. Immediately, the Red Crescent sponsored 40,000 refugees, providing them food, shelter and health care.
The UAE first pledged $36 million for the effort at the 2002 Tokyo Donors Conference.However, this soon grew to $550 million by 2008, as the UAE and its leaders grew increasingly ambitious about rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and education, health and defence sectors.
The 6,400-student Sheikh Zayed University, in Khost, was named in 2008 in recognition of the UAE’s financial support. The UAE also contributed to the construction of 11 schools, six medical clinics for 35,000 patients, 38 mosques, a 7,000-patient hospital, a public library, accommodation for 200 families, 160 wells and other developments.
A further Dh92 million was spent clearing Kandahar of 11,000 mines — making the area safe for commercial, agricultural and residential use. The achievement mirrors the Dh260 million spent under Operation Emirates Solidarity, clearing southern Lebanon of 58,000 mines from 2001 to 2009.
From 2011 to 2013, the UAE raised nearly Dh1 billion in aid for Afghanistan, with 45 per cent coming directly from the Government and 41 per cent from ADFD.
Farther from its borders, in 1998, under Sheikh Zayed’s orders, the UAE became the only Muslim country to take part in the UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and provided the largest non-Nato contingent.
A refugee camp built by the military in Kukës, an Albanian border town, soon gained the nickname the “five-star camp”, for its provision of three meals a day, cots, blankets and security, with an airport built to ensure more efficient aid delivery to the camp.
When the first child was born in the camp, her parents named her Fatima, after Sheikha Fatima, chairwoman of the General Women’s union and widow of Sheikh Zayed, often called the Mother of the Nation. Earlier this year she sponsored a new children’s hospital in the capital of Kosovo, and she was awarded the Mother Teresa Humanitarian Medal for her contributions to improving living conditions across the world.
The country’s commitment remains as strong today as it did in 1971. Earlier this year, Sheikh Saif bin Zayed, Minister of Interior and Deputy Prime Minister, deployed a UAE search-and-rescue team of 88 people after a series of earthquakes in Nepal, to find survivors of a disaster that killed almost 9,000 and injured 22,000.
In all this is the vision expressed by Sheikh Zayed that “the grace of wealth bestowed upon us by the Almighty must be unfolded to encircle our friends and brethren around the world”.
