ABU DHABI, 27 June 2006 — Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, honorary chairwoman of the UAE Red Crescent Society, expressed her concern over appalling conditions of refugees around the world.
In a statement to mark the World Refugee Day, which is celebrated worldwide this month, Sheikha Fatima said that refugees’ plight needed concerted efforts by the international community and further bolstering partnership between humanitarian organizations to improve their conditions and to highlight their issues.
“Standing by the refugees in their plight is a sacred duty dictated by our tolerant religion and our deep-rooted traditions. This duty transcends borders, nations and tongues. I feel sorrow for the suffering of women and children who were forced to seek refuge away from their homes. They are the ones who end up paying the hefty price and haunted by crises wherever they go,” Sheikh Fatima said in the statement carried by the official WAM news agency.
She underlined UAE’s role in helping and supporting refugees, saying that the country strongly supports refugees’ voluntary return and re-settlement in their native places.
Sheikha Fatima also called for unifying efforts to ease refugees’ suffering and to back UAE’s initiatives in that regard, most prominent of which is the Fund for Refugee Women and Children (FRWC), which was set up on her directives.
“We look forward to see the day when asylum is non-existent and where current conflicts and turmoil in the different regions of the world, which are the main reasons that drive people to seek asylum, are all resolved.”
Sheikha Fatima lauded the role being played by the Red Crescent Society in the help and rehabilitation of refugees. She added that the society had contributed vigorously in assisting refugees by setting up camps in Bosnia, Afghanistan and other war-ravaged and catastrophe-hit areas.
She also praised the role of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which is helping more than 19 million refugees around the world.
Sheikha Fatima announced on March 21, 2000, the establishment of FRWC and opened donations for the Fund with one million dirhams.
She donated another million during a ceremony held on April 4, 2001, by the UNHCR to decorate her with the commission’s gold medal in appreciation of her support to the refugees.
