Seventy percent of Saudi men who marry foreign women and then abandon them and their children abroad are over the age of 50, according to the head of a leading charity.

Tawfiq Al-Suwailem, chairman of the Saudi Charitable Society for the Welfare of Saudi Families Abroad (Awaser), said recently 25 percent of these men are between the ages of 35 and 50.

He said the number of stranded Saudi family members abroad has risen over the past year by 2,181, taking the total to 7,765 in 31 countries around the world.

Al-Suwailem said many of the Saudi men who abandon their families abroad use the excuse that they are afraid that they would be jailed for getting married without the approval of the Saudi government.

He stressed there are no known cases of Saudi students on scholarships getting married abroad and abandoning their wives and children.

He said many women marry Saudi citizens abroad simply to get citizenship of the Kingdom. Once they arrive in the country, many divorce their husbands and then return to their countries of birth with their children.

Al-Suwailem said some foreign mothers living abroad refuse to allow their children to be taken to the Kingdom because they fear they might lose charity and childcare subsidies in their home countries.

He said that if these children are brought to the Kingdom, they are often treated by the Saudi authorities as foreigners.

And when they want to leave Saudi Arabia, they are subject to lengthy procedures for identification paperwork and fingerprints, and are prevented from entering the Kingdom again for another five years.

Al-Suwailem called on the government to speed up procedures so that children of Saudis living abroad can return to the Kingdom.

He said many wives and children of Saudis living abroad are unaware that they would be cared for and reunited with their Saudi husbands and fathers in the Kingdom.

Awaser takes care of families left behind by Saudi men by providing them with financial and moral support. It also helps to repatriate them. These wives and children are mostly in Kuwait, followed by Syria and Egypt, according to reports.

Other countries with stranded Saudis are Jordan, Bahrain, Morocco, Lebanon, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Philippines, Indonesia, the United States, India, Oman, Tunisia, Britain, Pakistan and Sudan.