The Minister for EU Affairs, The French Foreign Minister, the French Development Agency, and the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre have signed an agreement to launch a joint €30 million fund in support of Lebanon.
The Saudi-French project will fund a series of humanitarian and development initiatives in crisis-hit Lebanon.
The funds will provide emergency aid, focusing as a priority on food security and on facilitating access to primary healthcare to the most vulnerable, the French embassy said in a statement.
It added that the funds will especially support the main public hospital of Lebanon’s poorest city, Tripoli. The city has been hit Saturday by a deadly tragedy as an overpacked migrant boat capsized, stirring protests and unrest.
Saudi ambassador to Lebanon Walid Boukhari said “the funds will finance the 6 main sectors of food security, health, education, energy, water and internal security, without any sectarian differentiation.”
The French-Saudi deal comes weeks after the return of the Saudi Ambassador, who had left Lebanon last October, following an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between the two countries over a minister’s critical remarks on the Saudi role in Yemen’s war.